t this
is doubtful; for Willis, one of the committee called "the sealed knot," who
was imprisoned, but discharged in September (Perfect Account, No. 194),
proved afterwards a traitor.]

[Footnote 2: State Trials, v. 517-540. Thurloe, ii. 416, 446, 447.
Whitelock, 591, 593, 593. Henshaw was not produced on the trial. It was
pretended that he had escaped. But we learn from Thurloe that he was safe
in the Tower, and so Gerard suspected in his speech on the scaffold.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. May 24.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1654. June 30.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1654. July 6.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1654. July 10.]

Though Cromwell professed to disbelieve the charge, yet as a measure of
self-defence he threatened the exiled prince that, if any such attempt were
encouraged, he should have recourse to retaliation, and, at the same time,
intimated that it would be no difficult matter for him to execute his
threat.[1]

On the same scaffold, but an hour later, perished a foreign nobleman, only
nineteen years old, Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to Guimaraes, the Portuguese
ambassador. Six months before, he and Gerard, whose execution we have
just noticed, had quarrelled[a] in the New Exchange. Pantaleon, the next
evening,[b] repaired to the same place with a body of armed followers; a
fray ensued; Greenway, a person unconcerned in the dispute, was killed
by accident or mistake; and the Portuguese fled to the house of the
ambassador, whence they were conducted to prison by the military. The
people, taking up the affair as a national quarrel, loudly demanded the
blood of the reputed murderers. On behalf of Pantaleon it was argued: 1.
That he was an ambassador, and therefore answerable to no one but his
master; 2. That he was a person attached to the embassy, and therefore
covered by the privilege of his principal. But the

[Footnote 1: Cromwell did not give credit to the plots for murdering
him.--Thurloe, ii. 512, 533. Clarendon writes thus on the subject to his
friend Nicholas: "I do assure you upon my credit, I do not know, and upon
my confidence, the king does not, of any such design. Many wild, foolish
persons propose wild things to the king, which he civilly discountenances,
and then they and their friends brag what they hear, or could do; and, no
doubt, in some such noble rage that hath now fallen out which they talk so
much of at London, and by which many honest men are in prison, of which
whole matter the king knows no more than secret