That arts of foreign sway he did affect,
And guilty Jebusites from law protect,
Whose very chiefs, convict, were never freed;
Nay, we have seen their sacrificers bleed.—P. [320.]
It is certain, that, whatever the private wishes of Charles may have been, he neither did nor durst interfere, by his royal prerogative, to prevent the execution of Stafford, Coleman, Langhorne, Plunket, and other Catholics of rank, who were condemned on account of the Popish Plot. Ireland, Fenwic, Gavan, Turner, and Harcourt, Jesuits, with Whitebread, the provincial of the order, were all tried, sentenced, and executed for the same conspiracy; persisting, to their last breath, in the most solemn and deliberate asseverations of innocence: But their dying testimonies only irritated the populace the more against a religion, which taught its votaries to go down to the grave with a manifest lie, as they supposed, in their right hand.
Mere truth was dull, nor suited with the port
Of pampered Corah, when advanced to court.