Church of England, willing to join in the plot for a valuable consideration. Lunt said they had gold in for £100,000 a year, and that the informants were to have a third of the forfeited estates. He asked Lunt if he knew Dicconson’s brother, and Lunt, all unconscious that he was sitting face to face with him, replied, “Yes, very well; for he had delivered commissions to Hugh and Roger Dicconson about Christmas!” Many more witnesses were examined, some of whom established that certain of the prisoners were not in the neighbourhood of Croxteth and Dukenhalgh at the time of the alleged Jacobite meetings at those places; whilst others gave most damaging evidence as to the utter rascality of Lunt and his chief witnesses—Womball, Wilson, and Brereton. The judge, in his summing up, contented himself with saying that the matter deserved great consideration, in which opinion the jury did not agree, for, after a short consultation, and without leaving court, they returned for each prisoner a verdict of NOT GUILTY. Mr. Justice Eyres then discharged them, with an eulogy upon the merciful and easy Government under which they lived, and advised them to beware of ever entering into plots and conspiracies against it. Lord Molyneux, Sir William Gerard, and Bartholomew Walmsley, Esq., were then put to the bar, but, no witnesses appearing, they were also declared Not Guilty, which gave Mr. Justice Eyres an opportunity for another cynical speech, concluding with these words: “Let me therefore say to you, go and sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you.” As they had just been pronounced innocent, the meaning and fitness of his remarks are somewhat questionable. But if his bias prejudiced him against the prisoners, they would have compensation in the popular satisfaction at their acquittal. Manchester went mad with joy. Lunt and his merry men were pelted out of the town, and only escaped lynching by the intervention of the prisoners’ friends; and all concerned in the prosecution came in for a share of popular hatred. The peril which the Lancashire gentlemen thus strangely escaped was a very great one, but the peril which the country escaped was greater still, for had there been wanting the disaffection of Taafe to his brother rascal Lunt, the courage and address of Roger Dicconson, and the honesty of the Manchester jury, England might have seen a repetition of the atrocities of Titus Oates and William Bedloe; might have seen a bigamist highwayman going from shire to shire and fattening on the blood and ruin of the best of her nobles and gentlemen.