Among those who conspired with Monmouth were honest hearts seeking for the welfare of the realm.

Chief of these were Lord Russel and Sidney, of whom the latter was in favor of a commonwealth; and the former, only sought the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Duke of York, and the redress of grievances, but not the assassination or deposition of the king.

Both fell on the scaffold; but they have both been considered martyrs in the cause of civil liberty.
And here we must pause to say that in the literary structure, language, and rhythm of the poem, Dryden had made a great step toward that mastery of the rhymed pentameter couplet, which is one of his greatest claims to distinction.
DEATH OF CHARLES .-- At length, in 1685, Charles II., after a sudden and short illness, was gathered to his fathers.

His life had been such that England could not mourn: he had prostituted female honor, and almost destroyed political virtue; sold English territory and influence to France for beautiful strumpets; and at the last had been received, on his death-bed, into, the Roman Catholic Church, while nominally the supreme head of the Anglican communion.

England cannot mourn, but Dryden tortures language into crocodile tears in his _Threnodia Augustalis, sacred to the happy memory of King Charles II_.