that the saddles were meant only for hunting, and that the swords were rusty reliques of Edge Hill and Marston Moor.542 The effect produced by all this invective and sarcasm on the public mind seems to have been great.  Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredly there was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression that it would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial.  In Lancashire and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused and hatred of the prosecutors.  The government however persevered.  In October four Judges went down to Manchester.  At present the population of that town is made up of persons born in every part of the British Isles, and consequently has no especial sympathy with the landowners, the farmers and the agricultural labourers of the neighbouring districts.  But in the seventeenth century the Manchester man was a Lancashire man.  His politics were those of his county.  For the old Cavalier families of his county he felt a great respect; and he was furious when he thought that some of the best blood of his county was about to be shed by a knot of Roundhead pettifoggers from London.  Multitudes of people from the neighbouring villages filled the streets of the town, and saw with grief and indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded carbines which surrounded the culprits.  Aaron Smith’s arrangements do not seem to have been skilful.  The chief counsel for the Crown was Sir William Williams, who, though now well stricken in years and possessed of a great estate, still continued to practise.  One fault had thrown a dark shade over the latter part of his life.  The recollection of that day on which he had stood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to defend the dispensing power and to attack the right of petition, had, ever since the Revolution, kept him back from honour.  He was an angry and disappointed man, and was by no means disposed to incur unpopularity in the cause of a government to which he owed nothing, and from which he hoped nothing.

Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have both a Whig narrative and a Jacobite narrative.543 It seems that the prisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their challenges, and were consequently tried together.  Williams examined or rather crossexamined his own witnesses with a severity which confused them.  The crowd which filled the court laughed and clamoured.  Lunt in particular became completely bewildered, mistook one person for another, and did not recover himself till the judges took him out of the hands of the counsel for the Crown.  For some of the prisoners an alibi was set up.  Evidence was also produced to show, what was undoubtedly quite true, that Lunt was a man of abandoned character.  The result however seemed doubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors, Taaffe entered the box.  He swore with unblushing forehead that the whole story of the plot was a circumstantial lie devised by himself and Lunt.  Williams threw down his brief; and, in truth, a more honest advocate might well have done the same.  The prisoners who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; those who had not yet been tried were set at liberty; the witnesses for the prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crown narrowly escaped with life; and the judges took their departure amidst hisses and execrations.