[Footnote 1:  Cromwell did not give credit to the plots for murdering him.—­Thurloe, ii. 512, 533.  Clarendon writes thus on the subject to his friend Nicholas:  “I do assure you upon my credit, I do not know, and upon my confidence, the king does not, of any such design.  Many wild, foolish persons propose wild things to the king, which he civilly discountenances, and then they and their friends brag what they hear, or could do; and, no doubt, in some such noble rage that hath now fallen out which they talk so much of at London, and by which many honest men are in prison, of which whole matter the king knows no more than secretary Nicholas doth.”—­Clar.  Papers, iii. 247.  See, however, the account of Sexby’s plot in the next chapter.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1653.  Nov. 21.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1653.  Nov. 22.]

instrument which he produced in proof of the first allegation was no more than a written promise that he should succeed his brother in-office; and in reply to the second, it was maintained[a] that the privilege of an ambassador, whatever it might be, was personal, and did not extend to the individuals in his suite.  At the bar, after several refusals, he was induced by the threat of the peine forte et dure to plead not guilty; and his demand of counsel, on account of his ignorance of English law, was rejected, on the ground that the court was “of counsel equal to the prisoner and the commonwealth.”  He was found guilty, and condemned, with four of his associates.  To three of these the protector granted a pardon; but no entreaties of the several ambassadors could prevail in favour of Pantaleon.  He was sacrificed, if we believe one of them, to the clamour of the people, whose feelings were so excited, that when his head fell on the scaffold,[b] the spectators proclaimed their joy by the most savage yells of exultation.[1] It was the very day on which his brother, perhaps to propitiate the protector, had signed the treaty between the two nations.

These executions had been preceded by one of a very different description.  Colonel Worsley had apprehended a Catholic clergyman, of the name of Southworth, who, thirty-seven years before, had been convicted at Lancaster, and sent into banishment.  The old man (he had passed his seventy-second year),

[Footnote 1:  See in State Trials, v. 461-518, a numerous collection of authorities and opinions respecting this case.  Also ibid. 536.  That Pantaleon and his friends were armed, cannot be denied:  was it for revenge?  So it would appear from the relation in Somers’s Tracts, iii. 65; Whitelock, 569; and State Trials, v. 482.  Was it solely for defence?  Such is the evidence of Metham (Thurloe, ii. 222), and the assertion of Pantaleon at his death.—­Whitelock, ii. 595.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1654.  July 5.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1654.  July 10.]