TYRANNICIDE - SEXBY, Edward & Silius Titus (attrib.)

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Killing No Murder: A Jacobite reincarnation, after the Glorious Revolution, of this extraordinary and widely circulated 17th-century defence of tyrannicide, originally on first publication in 1657 an appeal for the assassination of Oliver Cromwell, this one of three clandestine editions which appeared following the deposition of James III and ascent of William and Mary, aimed at the new monarchs.Drawing on classical writers including Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon, and modern writers including Hugo Grotius, the author provides a basis for tyrannicide as a lawful act, and sets out to prove that Cromwell "was a tyrant on a par with Caligula and Nero. However stable, his reign was an abrogation of law which constituted the enslavement of the English people and threatened the outright corruption of English society. In such circumstances the private citizen was perfectly within his rights in seeking to exact the punishment for which responsibility ought normally to rest with God and the magistrate. Tyranny being the suspension of the normal course of law, tyrannicide could not be regarded as an act of murder" (ODNB, William Sexby). The pamphlet was published pseudonymously under "William Allen", and the author has never been satisfactorily identified. The two most likely claimants are Colonel Silius Titus and Edward Sexby, both of whom claimed authorship; most probably they collaborated.Three editions were published in 1689, undoubtedly Jacobite. Parallels between William III and

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