Jeffreys. The alarm was given.
In a moment the house was surrounded by hundreds of people shaking
bludgeons and bellowing curses. The fugitive's life was saved by a
company of the trainbands; and he was carried before the Lord Mayor. The
Mayor was a simple man who had passed his whole life in obscurity,
and was bewildered by finding himself an important actor in a mighty
revolution. The events of the last twenty-four hours, and the perilous
state of the city which was under his charge, had disordered his mind
and his body. When the great man, at whose frown, a few days before, the
whole kingdom had trembled, was, dragged into the justice room begrimed
with ashes, half dead with fright, and followed by a raging multitude,
the agitation of the unfortunate Mayor rose to the height. He fell into
fits, and was carried to his bed, whence he never rose. Meanwhile the
throng without was constantly becoming more numerous and more savage.
Jeffreys begged to be sent to prison. An order to that effect was
procured from the Lords who were sitting at Whitehall; and he was
conveyed in a carriage to the Tower. Two regiments of militia were drawn
out to escort him, and found the duty a difficult one. It was repeatedly
necessary for them to form, as if for the purpose of repelling a charge
of cavalry, and to present a forest of pikes to the mob. The thousands
who were disappointed of their revenge pursued the coach, with howls
of rage, to the gate of the Tower, brandishing cudgels, and holding up
halters full in the prisoner's view. The wretched man meantime was
in convulsions of terror. He wrung his hands; he looked wildly out,
sometimes at one window, sometimes at the other, and was heard even
above the tumult, crying "Keep them off, gentlemen! For God's sake keep
them off!" At length, having suffered far more than the bitterness
of death, he was safely lodged in the fortress where some of his most
illustrious victims had passed their last days, and where his own life
was destined to close in unspeakable ignominy and horror. [580]

All this time an active search was making after Roman Catholic priests.
Many were arrested. Two Bishops, Ellis and Leyburn, were sent to
Newgate. The Nuncio, who had little reason to expect that either
his spiritual or his political character would be respected by the
multitude, made his escape disguised as a lacquey in the train of the
minister of the Duke of Savoy. [581]

Another day of agitation and ter