that he, if not Ormond, had been calculating on the
co-operation of Fairfax, Lambent, Sir William Waller, and a great
many other persons of name, up and down the country, not included
among those whom Cromwell had seen fit to arrest. As Thurloe
distinctly says, "It's certain Sir William Waller was fully engaged,"
the omission, of that veteran commander from the number must have
been an act of grace. About Lambert the speculation seems to have
been absurd; and, though Cromwell must have known that Fairfax was
now inclining generally towards a Restoration, he cannot have
believed anything stronger at present in his case. There was no
public reference to such high personages; nor, with the exception of
some friendly expostulation by the Protector with a young Mr. John
Stapley of Sussex (son of Stapley the Regicide and Councillor of the
Commonwealth), who _had_ been lured into the business, was any
account taken of the other miscellaneous persons in Hewit's list of
reputable sympathisers. It was enough for Cromwell to know who had
swerved so far, and to have made examples of Hewit himself and
Slingsby.--These two would have been the only victims but for a wild
sub-conspiracy in the City of London while the trials of Hewit and
Slingsby were in progress. A few desperate cavaliers about town, the
chief of whom were a Sir William Leighton, a Colonel Deane, and a
Colonel Manley, holding commissions from Charles, had met several
times at the Mermaid Tavern and elsewhere, and had arranged for a
midnight tumult on Saturday the 15th of May. They were to attack the
guard at St. Paul's, seize the Lord Mayor, raise a conflagration near
the Tower, &c. The hour had come, and the conspirators were in the
Mermaid Tavern for their final arrangements, when lo! the trainbands
on the alert all round them and Barkstead riding through the streets
with a train of five small cannon. A good many were arrested, thirty
of them London prentices. Six of the principals were condemned July
2, of whom one was hanged, two were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and
three were reprieved. For the prentices there was all clemency.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-870; Godwin, IV. 508-527; _Merc.
Pol_, May 13-20, 1658, quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 171-172;
Thurloe, VII. 25, 65-69, 88-90, 100, and 147-8; Whitlocke, IV. 334.]

Though the prosecutions of the Royalist plotters were not concluded
till the beginning of July, all real danger from the plot itself had
been ov