For thou did’st vow to stand our friend,
But hast prov’d traitor in the end.
Thou brought’st us from our own country,
We left our home and came with thee;
But thou art a rogue and a traitor both,
And hast broke thy honour and thy oath.’
THE PRISONERS IN THE TOWER.
The remaining prisoners and their possible destiny continued to occupy the public mind. One day, a group of them might be seen on their way to the Thames, where they were to be shipped for ‘the Carolinas.’ Lord Carnwath, it was said, would be pardoned, but Lords Widdrington and Nairn would be transported to the Plantations for seven years, and then set free on finding bail for their future good behaviour. The captives in Newgate fought in the court-yard, or laid informations against each other, while their wives traversed London wearily in search of powerful friends to liberate them. Great interest was evinced in Lord Wintoun. This was increased when a morning paper quaintly informed its readers that ‘as for the Earl of Wintoun, his Counsel having insinuated that he is not perfect in his Intellectuals, ’tis said he will be confined for Life!’
The lords, under sentence of death, in the Tower, continued to be reprieved from time to time. As various alterations in the process of the trials followed, it was not doubted, ‘Mercurius’ says, ‘but there had some light been given in return for that grace, by which further discoveries were made than had been before.’ If this be true, the baseness of such informers was more detestable than that of the Rev. Mr. Patten. This man began now to be treated by the public as a double-dyed rascal; and this treatment urged him to publish his reasons for turning king’s evidence, in a letter addressed to one of the Shaftoes, a rebel prisoner in Newgate. The letter is long and very wide of its pretended purpose. It affects indeed a certain horror of rebellion against the Church and Throne; and it insinuates that Shaftoe might do well to follow the example of the writer, who mendaciously pretended that in becoming a witness against his old confederates, no promise of pardon or of any advantage was made to him, and that he was utterly ignorant as to the way in which it might please God that he should die!
PATTEN ON THE PRINCE OF WALES.