away Stafford ! whose life he had falsely destroyed.1 Another was Carstairs, the Scotch spy, who died no less miserably, "under great horror, and ordered himself to be cast into some ditch as a dog, for he said he was no better." 3 Miles Prance was to linger longer, outliving the Revolution, hesitating between Popery and Protestantism, or changing them by turns, like his prevarications and recanted recantations. He had abjectly confessed his perjuries, in 1685, and been exposed in the pillory. The pillory had also enclosed Dangerfield, at the same time, who died after his deserved whipping, but chiefly through the injury received from the cane of the Templar Francis: the agonizing death closing a life of continuous infamy. Perhaps the degraded existence of Titus Oates would have lacked its completeness--finis coronat opus !—if he had not survived his public disgrace to become the grasper of a restored pension from William of Orange, as a reward for villainy that had been profitable to the Dutch interloper by calumniating his dethroned uncle and wife's father. The old sentence of conviction for his perjuries was left uncancelled. The silver was duly returned to this Judas, but to cleanse him was felt to be impossible.

The account given of Dugdale's frequent attacks of terror, imagining that Stafford was returning for him, is partly told by William Smith, M.A., late schoolmaster of Islington, in his Intrigues of the Popish Plot laid open: with Depositions sworn before the Secretary of State, folio, 1685, p. 26. He also gives "the relation of Tubervile's Death, the other great witness against the Lord Stafford Falling sick of the smallpox at his landladie's, Mrs. Holmes, in the Savoy, near his death he began to rave extreamly of Stafford, crying, 'Take away Stafford! Take away Stafford !' with several other continued crys upon the same subject; which several persons, both the landladie's relation and others, will testifie and at the minute of his death his bed shook so extreamly, that his landlady and several other people then present thought it would have fallen to pieces. Nay, and there came such a strong blast of Wind, that the people were afraid the House would have been blown down. And 'tis not unknown, also, that a much greater man than Turbevil at his exit demonstrated an extraordinary remembrance of Stafford." This refers to Shaftesbury," who died miserably, like a poisoned rat," at Amsterdam; but it is likewise true of Lord William Russell, who had been reminded of his own opposition to the King's exercise of dispensing power, in relieving Stafford of the worst degradations at execution; which dispensing power was again employed for Russell, when his turn came round.

2 After an infamous career in the North, as an informer against conventicles, this man went to London and there denounced William Staley, the Catholic goldsmith and banker (who was the first victim of the" Popish Plot" discoveries, see our p. 129). A different Wm. Carstairs figured in some of the same religious troubles, but he survived until December, 1715. His memoir has been lately perpetrated, a Lorne Story book, in 1874.

Burnet, Hist. of his Own Time, edition 1875, p. 291.

4 See the Editor's Bagford Ballads, 1878, pp. 705-710. In the Ouvry Collection, i. 77, is "The Doleful Lamentation of Thos. Dangerfield, who was lately apprehended and imprisoned in Newgate, for High Misdemeaner, &c." Printed for J. Huzzey, 1685. It begins, "Mark well my words, you Country Men."

[Luttrell Collection, III., 136.]

Upon the Execution

Of the Late

[WTM. Howard] Viscount Stafford.

Hall every Jack, and every Jill,
That rides in State up Holborn Hill,1
By aid of Smithfield Rhymes defie
The Malice of Mortality?
And shall Lord Stafford dye forgot?
He that would needs be such a Sot,
To dye for love of a damn'd Plot?

No, Viscount, no; beleive it not.

Diana's Temple, all in flame,

Advanc'd th' Incendiarie's Name; ?
Ruffians, and spnea, and sexy, and Theives,
In Ballad Records live new lives:

And shall a Lord, because a Traytor,

In such an Age, so given to flatter,

Want that which others, Saints to him,

Ne'er want to fame them, Words and Rhime?

Oh, Sir, the Papishes, you know,

Have much more gratitude then so;

For this same Lord, that brake the Laws
Of God and Man, to serve their Cause,

Shall live in Prayers and Almanacks

Beyond what Ballad-Monger make[s];
And some years hence, you'll see, shall work
Such Miracles, would turn a Turk.

Blest is that Man that has a Box

To save the Sawdust in, that sokes
His tainted Blood, or can besmeare
One corner of his Muckinder; 3

8

16

16

24

1 From Newgate to Holborn, and so on to Tyburn.

2 Sir Thomas Browne writes, "Herostratus lives [in memory] that burnt the Temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it."-Hydriotaphia, cap. v. p. 76, May, 1658.

3 Pocket napkin or handkerchief: so used by Ben Jonson and Fletcher.

The Man that for Religion dyes

Has nothing more before his Eyes, But he that dyes a Criminal

Dyes with a load, and none can call
Religion that which makes him dream
Obduracy can hide his shame.

The Pope may do what he conjectures
As to the business of his Pictures,
The Colours ne're can hide the Crimes,
Stories will read to after Times:

And 'twill be found the Hangman's hands
Will strangely blur the Pope's commands.

Had he but shewed some Christmas Gambles,
And Headless took St. Denis' Rambles,
The Plot had been a damnable thing,
And down had gon[e] the Scaffolding:
But 'cause his Lordship this forgot,
Men still beleive there is a Plot.
Where was St. Dominic, asleep?

Where did St. Frank his Kennel keep?

That on a business so emergen'

They did not briskly teize the Virgin ?

To let his Lordship play a Prank

64

Her Grace becoming, and his Rank?

But they that Heaven and Earth command,
You see, sometimes they'r at a stand;
For, truth to tell ye, should the Saints
Be bound to hear all fools' complaints;
Their lives would be as voyd of mirth
In Heaven, as formerly on Earth.
Now Ballad-wise, before he's dead,
To tell ye what the Sufferer said;
He both defended, and gain-said,

Held up his hands, and cry'd, and pray'd.
And swore he nere was in the Plot,
No, by his Vicountship, God wot.

Come, come, Sir, had it not been better

To have dy'd to death [a] common debter? And that upon your lasting Stone

This Character had been alone?

Here lyes a very Honest Lord,

True to his King, true to his word.

But those, of your Religion,

Are now a days so damn'd high flown, You think that nothing makes a Saint But Plot refin'd, and Treason quaint ; And Heaven accepts no Offerings,

But ruin'd Kingdoms, murdered Kings.

Now you that knew who were his Judges,
Who found him Guilty without grudges,
Who gave him over to the Block,

And how he sham'd to save the stroak,

=

[In White-letter. No woodcut. D. M. David Mallet. N.B. line 71.]

112

1 For notices and caricatures of Roger L'Estrange, see pp. 244, 252, 257, 310. "Turncoat Bob," M.P., otherwise "Changeling Robin," otherwise Sir Robert Peyton, on whom the Commons glutted their spite, when the Lords threw out the Exclusion Bill by a majority of thirty-three, on 15th Nov., 1680. Sir Edward Seymour, the late Speaker, was impeached, "Sir Robert Peyton was brought upon his knees and expelled the House." (See pp. 177 to 182.)

3 Probably meaning into Purgatory: a dungeon in the Tower of London was called "Little Ease," for there were worse. In bitter virulence this ballad is worthy of John Oldham. (Compare our pp. 107, 111, 139.) He has been neglected of late years, for he deliberately made himself the poet of a faction, and of a temporary mania. He encouraged the craving for slaughter of Catholic victims, and wrote mockingly, in his second Satyr upon the Jesuits, 1679:

Rebellion, Treason, Murder, Massacre,
The chief ingredients now of Saintship are,

And Tyburn only stocks the Calendar.

150

Room for the Martyr'd Saints! behold they come !
With what a noble scorn they meet their doom!

Not Knights o' th' Post, nor often Carted Whores

Shew more of Impudence, or less Remorse.

O glorious and heroick Constancy!

That can forswear upon the Cart, and die
With gasping Souls expiring in a Lye.

Or let that wholesome Statute be reviv'd
Which England heretofore from Wolves reliev'd:
Tax every Shire instead of them to bring
Each year a certain tale of Jesuits in:

And let their mangled Quarters hang the Isle

To scare all future Vermin from the Soil.

210

260

The True Protestant Litany.

"You common cry of Curs, whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten Fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcases of unburied men,
That do corrupt my air..

Let every feeble Rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair.

-Coriolanus, Act iii. sc. 3.

WITHOUT any date or printer's name, and left for us to judge

solely by internal evidence, we scarcely err in attributing "The True Protestant's Lettany " to so early a year as 1681, or near it; instead of 1688, as had hitherto been done. We believe the reference in the ninth line is to the acquittal of Sir George Wakeman and his companions, in June, 1679, with insinuation that Scroggs had been bribed to avoid the condemnation. The "consulting the stars," in line fifteen, seems to point to John Gadbury and the Cellier trials of 1680. We take the next verse to refer to L'Estrange, and other Tory directors of opinion. Line thirty-first, referring to the dissension between King and Parliament, could scarcely have held full force except before, or, at latest, immediately after the dissolution at Oxford; although it by no means limits us to a parliament actually sitting. Line thirty-fifth may suit the Wakeman trial, June, 1679, or that of Viscount Stafford, December, 1680, or even (if we went so late) the downfall of Dangerfield and Oates in 1685: but we believe undoubtingly that it held reference to King Charles's time. In James's, by no correctness of language could the Plot-discoverers be called "The King's Evidence": they had always been opposed to him. Lastly, we hold the most important clue in line thirty-seventh, which, we maintain, alludes to the four or five imprisoned Popish Lords, the Earl Powys, William, Lord Petre (who died in the Tower, before release, in January, 168), Henry, Lord Arundel of Wardour, Lord Bellasis, etc.; and not to the restoration to liberty and power of the same Powys, along with the Priest, Father Petre, or "Peters," immediately before the abdication of James II. Thus we are led to our belief that the true date is 1680, possibly in December, a few days before Stafford's execution: between the prorogation of October 21st, and the further prorogation ending in dissolution of January.

If the later date be correct, 1688, lines first and second refer to Wm. Penn; and line twenty-ninth to the four Vicars Apostolical, with the Papal Nuncio, Ferdinando D'Ada. This is less probable.