Those dire atificers of death shall bleed.
Against themselves their witnesses will swear,
Till, viper-like, their mother-plot they tear.—P. [247.]
This is rather an imprudent avowal of what was actually the policy of the court faction at this time. They contrived to turn against Shaftesbury and his party, many of those very witnesses by whom so many Catholics had been brought to execution. Dugdale, Turberville, Haynes, and Smith, all of whom had been witnesses of the plot, now came as readily forward to convict Colledge, Howard, and Shaftesbury himself, of high treason. Such infamous traffic ought to have deprived them of credit on all sides; but it was the misfortune of the time, that, swear what they would one day, and the exact contrary the next, they, on each occasion, found a party to countenance, believe, and reward them.
ABSALOM
AND
ACHITOPHEL.
PART II.
Si quis tamen hæc quoque, si quis
Captus amore leget.——