This his false charge against the Baptist left him no further room to play the hypocrite in those parts; off therefore go his cloak and vizor. And now he openly appears in his proper colours, to disturb the assemblies of God’s people, which was indeed the very end for which the design at first was laid.
But because the law provided that a conviction must be grounded upon the oaths of two witnesses, it was needful for him, in order to the carrying on his intended mischief, to find out an associate who might be both sordid enough for such an employment and vicious enough to be his companion.
This was not an easy task, yet he found out one who had already given an experiment of his readiness to take other men’s goods, being not long before released out of Aylesbury gaol, where he very narrowly escaped the gallows for having stolen a cow.
The names of these fellows being yet unknown in that part of the country where they began their work, the former, by the general voice of the country, was called the Trepan; the latter, the Informer, and from the colour of his hair Red-hair. But in a little time the Trepan called himself John Poulter, adding withal that Judge Morton used to call him John for the King, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury had given him a deaconry. That his name was indeed John Poulter, the reputed son of one — Poulter, a butcher in Salisbury, and that he had long since been there branded for a fellow egregiously wicked and debauched, we were assured by the testimony of a young man then living in Amersham, who both was his countryman and had known him in Salisbury, as well as by a letter from an inhabitant of that place, to whom his course of life had been well known.
His comrade, who for some time was only called the Informer, was named Ralph Lacy, of Risborough, and surnamed the Cow-stealer.
These agreed between themselves where to make their first onset, which was to be, and was, on the meeting of the people called Quakers, then holden at the house of William Russell, called Jourdan’s, in the parish of Giles Chalfont, in the county of Bucks; that which was wanting to their accommodation was a place of harbour, for assistance wherein recourse was had to Parson Philips, none being so ready, none so willing, none so able to help them as he.
A friend he had in a corner, a widow woman, not long before one of his parishioners; her name was Anne Dell, and at that time she lived at a farm called Whites, a bye-place in the parish of Beaconsfield, whither she removed from Hitchindon. To her these fellows were recommended by her old friend the parson. She with all readiness received them; her house was at all times open to them; what she had was at their command.
Two sons she had at home with her, both at man’s estate. The younger son, whose name was John Dell, listed himself in the service of his mother’s new guests, to attend on them as their guide, and to inform them (who were too much strangers to pretend to know the names of any of the persons there) whom they should inform against.
Thus consorted, thus in a triple league confederated, on the 24th day of the fifth month, commonly called July, in the year 1670, they appeared openly, and began to act their intended tragedy upon the Quakers’ meeting at the place aforesaid, to which I belonged, and at which I was present. Here the chief actor, Poulter, behaved himself with such impetuous violence and brutish rudeness as gave occasion for inquiry who or what he was? And being soon discovered to be the Trepan, so infamous and abhorred by all sober people, and afterwards daily detected of gross impieties and the felonious taking of certain goods from one of Brainford, whom also he cheated of money—these things raising an outcry in the country upon him, made him consult his own safety, and leaving his part to be acted by others, quitted the country as soon as he could.
He being gone, Satan soon supplied his place by sending one Richard Aris, a broken ironmonger of Wycombe, to join with Lacy in this service, prompted thereto in hopes that he might thereby repair his broken fortune.