s of atrocity. The plot was defeated, and the lives of the
persons accused, Jennet Bierley, Ellen Bierley, and Jane Southworth,
saved, by no sagacity of the judge or wisdom of the jury, but by the
effect of one simple question, wrung from the intended victims on the
verge of anticipated condemnation, and which, natural as it might
appear, was one the felicity of which Garrow or Erskine might have
envied. It demolished, like Ithuriel's spear, the whole fabric of
imposture, and laid it open even to the comprehension of Sir Edward
Bromley and Master Thomas Potts. This was a case which well deserved
Archbishop Harsnet for its historian. His vein of irony, which Swift
or Echard never surpassed, and the scorching invective of which he was
so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down
to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the
stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had,
from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute
1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared
a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have
accomplished at once what was slowly and with difficulty brought about
by the arguments of Scot and Webster, the establishment of the Royal
Society, and a century's growth of intelligence and knowledge.

K 3 _b_ 1. "_A Seminarie Priest._"] Of this Thompson, _alias_
Southworth, I find no account in Dodd's _Catholic Church History_. A
John Southworth is noticed, vol. iii. p. 303, who is described as of
an ancient family in Lancashire, and who was executed at Tyburn, June
28th, 1655. His dying speech is to be found in the same volume, p.
360. The interval of time, as well as the difference of surname,
excludes the presumption of his being identical with the person
referred to in the text, the hero of this extraordinary conspiracy,
and who was probably of the family of Sir John Southworth, after
mentioned.

K 3 _b_ 2. "_A Iesuite, whereof this Countie of Lancaster hath good
store._"] Lancashire was, about this period, the great hot-bed of
Popish recusants. From the very curious list of recusants given
(Baines's _Lancashire_, vol. i. p. 541,) it would seem that Samlesbury
was one of their strongholds:--

James Cowper a seminarie prieste receipted releived and
mainteined att the lodge of Sir John Southworthe in
Samlesburie Parke by Mr. Tho: Southworthe, one of the