Among those whom guilt had made desperate, we must include Lord and Lady Bellingham. We have seen that the former sacrificed his nephew to avoid being accused as a secret favourer of the royal cause, a charge he knew Cromwell had determined to urge against him, as a safe way of removing a staunch republican, who would oppose the ultimate views of his now ripe ambition. Eustace however drew the lot of death to no other purpose than to increase the remorse which occasionally tortured the bosom of Bellingham. A mutiny broke out the moment after the volley was fired, that sent the brave cavaliers to join in the grave the royal martyr whom they had served and deplored; for the rebel General, had awakened too many suspicions, and had too much offended his soldiers by his temporizing conduct, for this sacrifice to expiate his faults. It was remarked, that he never dealt in invective against his opponents, from whence it was inferred, that he wished to treat with them. He neglected the praying agitators, and therefore they called him Agag, the Amalekite, commanding the host of Israel. He abridged the liberty of the soldiers, and of course straitened the arm of the Lord. He disapproved of plunder and military contribution, consequently endeavoured to make the presbyterians popular at the expence of the godly. At this time these opponents hated each other still more than they did episcopacy; and a presbyterian general, commanding an army who claimed unbounded licence in judgment and conduct, must be condemned for a traitor by that unerring rule, the voice of the majority. Lord Bellingham was therefore arrested by the agitators, and sent prisoner to London at the instant when Eustace fell.
Imprisonment and the scaffold were frequently in those times synonymous. The fallen criminal saw his danger in its full horrors; and, while maintaining an inordinate attachment to this world, he dreaded the future consequence of his unrepented crimes. He had not numbed the early feelings of religion by the cold torpor of Atheism; nor could he persuade himself to indulge in those reveries of election and impeccability, which had now saturated his Lady's mind. He felt himself to be an accountable being, not a collection of animated atoms associated by chance, which, when the vital spark was extinguished, would crumble into dust without record or responsibility. He knew he was a sinner by choice, who had abused his free-will; not a passive vessel of wrath, pre-destined to destruction. No inflating ebullition of enthusiasm told him he was become one of those favourites of Heaven who cannot forfeit salvation. He therefore clung to this wretched life, as to the edge of a precipice that beetled over the gulph of perdition. Despair was with him the substitute of repentance. He looked back on his offences to his King and his friend, convinced that they had exceeded the bounds of mercy. Often did he deplore the utter impossibility of his regaining that state of contented innocence, when he and Allan Neville shared each other's hearts, before the superior qualities and nobler expectations of his friend excited his envy and ambition. He adverted to that time when his love for the beautiful Lady Eleanor was pure and generous, before she had wrought upon him to become the instrument and participator of her criminal ambition and insatiable rapacity. He had not the audacity to think a life stained by perfidy and injustice, made him fitter for the reception of extraordinary grace. The external propriety of his manners, and the patronage he liberally afforded to the divines of the Rump-party, had gained him the reputation of a man of extraordinary piety; but the austerities he practised, and the devotions in which he joined, afforded no balsam to his woes. He had been early taught that restitution to the wronged was one of the evidences of real penitence. His title and fortune were the right-hand; he could not cut off the pride of life to which he was wedded. Had he never known greatness, he would now have been happy as Walter de Vallance, living in a state of respectable competence. He fell into the common fault of incorrigible offenders; lamenting that he had not subdued the first cravings of desire, and wishing to recall the irremediable past, while to reform the present was too vast a labour.