secrets, to his enemies,[1] or who seduced his adherents into imaginary plots, that by the discovery they might earn the gratitude of the protector.  Of the latter class was an individual named Henshaw, who had repaired to Paris, and been refused what he solicited, admission to the royal presence.  On his return, he detailed to certain royalists a plan by which the protector might be assassinated on his way to Hampton Court, the guards at Whitehall overpowered, the town surprised, and the royal exile proclaimed.  Men were found to listen to his suggestions; and when a sufficient number were entangled in the toil, forty were apprehended[a] and examined.  Of these, many consented to give evidence; three were selected[b] for trial before the high court of justice.  Fox, one of the three, pleaded guilty, and thus, by giving countenance to the evidence of Henshaw, deserved and obtained[c] his pardon.  Vowell, a schoolmaster, and Gerard, a young gentleman two-and-twenty years of age, received[d] judgment of death.  The first suffered on the gallows, glorying that he died a martyr in the cause of royalty.  Gerard, before he was beheaded, protested in the strongest terms that, though he had heard, he had never approved of the design.[2] In the depositions, it was pretended that Charles had given his consent to the assassination of the protector.

[Footnote 1:  Clarendon informs Nicholas (June 12), that in reality no one secret had been betrayed or discovered.—­Clar.  Papers, iii. 247.  But this is doubtful; for Willis, one of the committee called “the sealed knot,” who was imprisoned, but discharged in September (Perfect Account, No. 194), proved afterwards a traitor.]

[Footnote 2:  State Trials, v. 517-540.  Thurloe, ii. 416, 446, 447.  Whitelock, 591, 593, 593.  Henshaw was not produced on the trial.  It was pretended that he had escaped.  But we learn from Thurloe that he was safe in the Tower, and so Gerard suspected in his speech on the scaffold.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1654.  May 24.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1654.  June 30.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1654.  July 6.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1654.  July 10.]

Though Cromwell professed to disbelieve the charge, yet as a measure of self-defence he threatened the exiled prince that, if any such attempt were encouraged, he should have recourse to retaliation, and, at the same time, intimated that it would be no difficult matter for him to execute his threat.[1]

On the same scaffold, but an hour later, perished a foreign nobleman, only nineteen years old, Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to Guimaraes, the Portuguese ambassador.  Six months before, he and Gerard, whose execution we have just noticed, had quarrelled[a] in the New Exchange.  Pantaleon, the next evening,[b] repaired to the same place with a body of armed followers; a fray ensued; Greenway, a person unconcerned in the dispute, was killed by accident or mistake; and the Portuguese fled to the house of the ambassador, whence they were conducted to prison by the military.  The people, taking up the affair as a national quarrel, loudly demanded the blood of the reputed murderers.  On behalf of Pantaleon it was argued:  1.  That he was an ambassador, and therefore answerable to no one but his master; 2.  That he was a person attached to the embassy, and therefore covered by the privilege of his principal.  But the