and he is said to have pursued and cut them down to the number of four hundred men, besides taking twelve hundred prisoners. Some of the ministers and leaders were executed, the more obstinate were sent as slaves to the plantations, many of them being lost at sea, and the rest were liberated on giving bonds for conformity. The efforts of Monmouth procured an indemnity and indulgence, which might after this severe chastisement, have produced the most salutary effect but we shall see that this was speedily superseded by the old, faithless, and cruel régime of Lauderdale, and the still more brutal rule of the duke of York.
Lord William Russell.
During this time the popish plot, with fresh actors and fresh ramifications, was agitated by the anti-papal party with unabated zeal. On the 24th of April a protestant barrister, Nathaniel Reading, was tried for tampering with the evidence against catholic noblemen in prison, in order to reduce the charge from treason to felony. It appeared that Bedloe had engaged him to do it, and then informed against him. There appeared on the trial many damning circumstances against the character and veracity of Bedloe, yet Reading was condemned to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, and to suffer a years imprisonment. Bedloe, Oates, and Prance were again, however, brought forward in June against Whitbread and Fenwick, who had been illegally remanded to prison on their former trial, and three other Jesuits—Harcourt, Gavan, and Turner were now also examined, and a new witness, one Dugdale, a discarded steward of lord Aston's, was introduced. Oates had little
