For printing this book, a prosecution was instituted against Richard Baldwin of the parish of St. Sepulchre in London. The information charges that the defendant, being a malicious and a seditious man, and contriving and maliciously intending to disturb the peace and common tranquillity of this kingdom, and to excite, move, and procure discord between the king and his subjects, and to bring into hatred and contempt the king's government and the due course of law of this kingdom, did, on the twentieth day of October in the thirty-third year of the reign of King Charles the Second, in the parish of St. Sepulchre aforesaid, falsely, unlawfully, wickedly, maliciously, seditiously, and scandalously cause to be printed, sold and published, a certain false, malicious, scandalous and seditious libel, intituled _No Protestant Plot_, containing among other things as follows:--_The King is of too much goodness, and a Prince of Greater Wisdom and more unstained justice, than that any of his subjects should apprehend or fear anything illegal from him while he acts free and unconstrained; but how far his Ministers, especially those who have been exasperated by the proceedings of Parliaments, may render his Authority a cloak to their malice, and make the pretence of his preservation and safety subservient to their revenge, is what we are jealous of. And tho' we would fain persuade ourselves that they are persons of more honour and integrity than to make reprisals upon the Lives of Peers for the injury which they suppose was done them; yet the imprisoning my Lord Shaftsbury upon the credit of Witnesses whose testimony they refused to believe in the case of my Lord Stafford, doth not a little surprize the thinking part of mankind. Now nothing can be more disservicable to his Majesty, or lessening to the honour of his Government, than to have his Authority abused to countenance a personal quarrel, and his Laws applied to revenge a private offence. And in another part as follows:--Nor can men persuade themselves to believe, but that the Imprisonment of my Lord Shaftsbury is built upon something which will not abide the Test, when they consider the way and method according to which he hath been all along treated. Before either Coleman or the Jesuits were sent to prison, they were allowed both to know and see the persons who had deposed against them. And it is generally believed, that every Englishman may demand it as his right. And therefore, the refusing it to my Lord Shaftsbury, does seem to intimate either that the Witnesses are not of a credit sufficient to support the confinement of so great a Peer, or else that it was not convenient to trust their carriage in this matter, as well as the general course of their lives, to an early and exact scrutiny. But as if this were not enough to create a suspition of some undue and indirect dealing in this affair, the refusing to