On March 26, 1681, in the parliament held at Oxford, Russell again seconded the Exclusion Bill. Upon the dissolution he re tired into privacy at his country seat of Stratton in Hampshire. In the wild schemes of Shaftesbury after the election of Tory sheriffs for London in 1682 he had no share; upon the violation of the charters, however, in 1683, he began seriously to consider as to the best means of resisting the government, and on one occasion attended a meeting at which treason, or what might be construed as treason, was talked. Monmouth, Essex, Hampden, Sidney and Howard of Escrick were the principal of those who met to consult. On the breaking out of the Rye House Plot, of which neither he, Essex, nor Sidney had the slightest knowledge, he was accused by informers of promising his assistance to raise an insurrection and compass the death of the king. Refusing to attempt to escape, he was brought before the council, when his attendance at the meeting referred to was charged against him. He was sent on June 26, 1683, to the Tower. Monmouth offered to appear to take his trial, if thereby he could help Russell, and Essex refused to abscond for fear of injuring his friend's chance of escape. Before a committee of the council Russell, on June 28, acknowledged his presence at the meeting, but denied all knowl edge of the proposed insurrection. He reserved his defence, how ever, until his trial. He would probably have saved his life but for the perjury of Lord Howard, who expressly declared that Russell had urged the entering into communications with Argyll in Scotland. Howard's perjury is clear from other witnesses, but the evidence was accepted. Russell spoke with spirit and dignity in his own defence, and, in especial, vehemently denied that he had ever been party to a design so wicked and so foolish as that of the murder of the king or of rebellion. The legality of the
trial, in so far as the jurors were not properly qualified and the law of treason was shamefully strained, was in the act of I William & Mary which annulled the attainder. Hallam main tains that the only overt act of treason proved against Russell was his concurrence in the project of a rising at Taunton, which he denied, and which, Ramsay being the only witness, was not sufficient to warrant a conviction.
Russell was sentenced to die. Many attempts were made to save his life. The old earl of Bedford offered £5o,000 or i100,000, and Monmouth, Legge, Lady Ranelagh, and Rochester added their intercessions. Russell himself, in petitions to Charles and James, offered to live abroad if his life were spared, and never again to meddle in the affairs of England. He refused, however, to yield to the influence of Burnet and Tillotson, who endeavoured to make him grant the unlawfulness of resistance, although it is more than probable that compliance in this would have saved his life. He drew up, with Burnet's assistance, a paper containing his apology, and he wrote to the king a letter, to be delivered after his death, in which he asked Charles's pardon for any wrong he had done him. A suggestion of escape from Lord Cavendish he refused. He behaved with his usual quiet cheerfulness during his stay in the Tower, and spent the last morning in devotion with Burnet. He was executed at Lincoln's Inn Fields on July 21, 1683.
A true and moderate summing-up of his character will be found in his Life, by Lord John Russell (1820).