All this was perfectly true. Sexby, the Leveller, had gone over to Charles, and thence to Spain, to solicit aid towards a Popish invasion, offering first to kill Cromwell himself. He obtained forty thousand crowns for the use of his party, and a promise of six thousand men when they were ready to land in England, who should wait in Flanders. Some of this money, when remitted to the accomplices in England, Cromwell intercepted, as he assured the Parliament. Sexby followed to accomplish his design of assassinating the Protector, as we shall find anon. Cromwell proceeded to remind Parliament of the insurrections excited by Charles's emissaries, Wagstaff and Rochester, and the conspiracy of Gerard and Vowel, the outbreaks at Salisbury, Rufford Abbey, and a score of other places; of Wildman taken in the act of penning his call to rebellion, of the design to destroy Monk in Scotland, and of similar instigations in the army in Ireland; of the plottings of the Lord Taaffe with Hyde at Antwerp; and, finally, that there had been an attempt to blow him up with gunpowder in his own house, and an officer of the Guard had been engaged to seize him in his bed. These last he characterised as "little fiddling attempts not worth naming," and which he regarded no more than he did "a mouse nibbling at his heel." But he told them that the animus altogether was of that un-English and un-Christian character, that it became them to fight manfully against it, and though they were low in funds, they should still put forth all their energies to crush this malignant power of Spain, whence the other enemies drew their strength. He informed them that France was well disposed to them, and that all the rest of the world was at peace with them.