COLONEL HENRY OXBURGH
Executed at Tyburn, May 14, 1716, for High Treason.
HENRY OXBURGH, Esq. the son of a man of considerable property in Lancashire, having been educated in the most rigid principles of the Roman Catholic religion, was sent abroad while a youth into the service of France, in which he acquired the character of a brave and gallant officer.
At the close of the war he returned to England to see his friends; and, finding that the rebels were advancing southwards, he raised a regiment with which he joined the main army before it reached Preston. Colonel Oxburgh was the man who ordered the rebels to fire on the royal troops, and if his opinion had been taken, the town would not have surrendered as soon as it did.
On his trial he pleaded guilty, but after sentence was passed on him, and he found that every application for mercy was unsuccessful, he talked in a strain very different from that of a man conscious of any crime. He said he considered the Pretender as his lawful sovereign, and never deemed himself the subject of any other prince.
He even asserted that he would have been equally loyal to the Pretender if he had been a Protestant.
This unhappy man seems to have fallen a victim to the prejudices of education