pt the coast,[a] captured three and drove on shore two
flutes destined for the expedition, and closely blockaded the harbour of
Ostend.[2] The design was again postponed till the winter;[b] and the king
resolved to solicit in person a supply of money at the court of the Spanish
monarch. But from this journey he was dissuaded both by Hyde and by the
Cardinal de Retz, who pointed out to him the superior advantage of his
residence in Flanders, where he was in readiness to seize the first
propitious moment which fortune should offer. In the mean time the
cardinal, through his agent in Rome, solicited from the pope pecuniary aid
for the king, on condition that in the event of his ascending the throne of
his fathers, he should release the Catholics of his three kingdoms from the
intolerable pressure of the penal laws.[3]

The transactions of this winter, the attempt of Syndercombe, the ascendancy
of the opposition in parliament,

[Footnote 1: Clar. Hist. iii. 614-618, 667. Clarendon's narrative is so
frequently inaccurate, that it is unsafe to give credit to any charge on
his authority alone; but in the present instance he relates the discovery
of the treachery of Willis with such circumstantial minuteness, that
it requires a considerable share of incredulity to doubt of its being
substantially true; and his narrative is confirmed by James II. (Mem. i.
370), and other documents to be noticed hereafter.]

[Footnote 2: Carte's Letters, ii. 126, 135. Clar. Papers, iii. 396.]

[Footnote 3: Carte's Letters, ii. 136-142, 145. Clar. Pap. iii. 401.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658. March 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1658. April 14.]

and the preparations of the royalists to receive the exiled king, added to
habitual indisposition, had soured and irritated the temper of Cromwell. He
saw that to bring to trial the men who had been his associates in the cause
might prove a dangerous experiment; but there was nothing to deter him from
wreaking his vengeance on the royalists, and convincing them of the danger
of trespassing any more on his patience by their annual projects of
insurrection. In every county all who had been denounced, all who were
even suspected, were put under arrest; a new high court of justice was
established according to the act of 1656; and Sir Henry Slingsby, Dr.
Hewet, and Mr. Mordaunt, were selected for the three first victims.
Slingsby, a Catholic gentleman and a prisoner at Hull, had endeavoured to
corrupt the fidelity of