[Original Size]
It is evident from numerous instances, that conspirators in those days were very apt to carry their designs no further than committing them to paper, and carefully depositing in some place or other the records of their crime, so that in case of detection the evidence against themselves would be complete and irresistible. Thus had the plotters with whom Dangerfield had been acting in concert, put away in a meal-tub the evidence of their intended proceedings, for no other purpose which we can perceive than the ultimate finding of the documents, and the furtherance of the ends of justice in the true poetical fashion. Lady Powis was implicated in this affair, and was sent to the Tower; but the Grand Jury ignored the bill against her, while Cellier, the midwife, who had aided in the miserable abortion, was tried and acquitted at the Old Bailey.
The rumour, or the reality of conspiracies against the royal family, did not prevent Charles from throwing himself into the pleasures, or rather the dissipations for which his Court was remarkable. Though political liberty was exceedingly scarce during this reign, he did not discourage the taking of liberties in private life, among those who formed the society by which he was surrounded. The palace was one continued scene of that degrading excitement which passes sometimes by the name of gaiety, and nearly every evening was devoted to that sort of entertainment which is sought by the snobs and shop-boys of our own day in the casinos and masked balls. The "fast" mania, which thrusts at this moment the penny cheroot between the lips of infancy, drags the clerk from the desk to the dancing rooms, and perhaps urges his felonious hand to his master's till, had in the time of Charles the Second corrupted the whole nation, from the highest to the lowest, so that even the best society—and bad indeed was the best—bore the impress of the example that was furnished by the king himself. The palace balls were accordingly conducted in a manner that would disgrace the humblest of modern hops, and in these days deprive of its licence any place of public entertainment where such behaviour would be permitted by the conductors of the establishment.
