Ashton was speedily executed. He might have saved his life by
making disclosures. But though he declared that, if he were
spared, he would always be a faithful subject of Their Majesties,
he was fully resolved not to give up the names of his
accomplices. In this resolution he was encouraged by the
nonjuring divines who attended him in his cell. It was probably
by their influence that he was induced to deliver to the Sheriffs
on the scaffold a declaration which he had transcribed and
signed, but had not, it is to be hoped, composed or attentively
considered. In this paper he was made to complain of the
unfairness of a trial which he had himself in public acknowledged
to have been eminently fair. He was also made to aver, on the
word of a dying man, that he knew nothing of the papers which had
been found upon him. Unfortunately his declaration, when
inspected, proved to be in the same handwriting with one of the
most important of those papers. He died with manly fortitude.12

Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against him was not
quite so clear as that on which his associates had been
convicted; and he was not worth the anger of the government. The
fate of Preston was long in suspense. The Jacobites affected to
be confident that the government would not dare to shed his
blood. He was, they said, a favourite at Versailles, and his
death would be followed by a terrible retaliation. They scattered
about the streets of London papers in which it was asserted that,
if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all the other Englishmen of
quality who were prisoners in France, would be broken on the
wheel.13 These absurd threats would not have deferred the
execution one day. But those who had Preston in their power were
not unwilling to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy to