According to what Echard believed to be unquestionable authority, Essex told the King that the charges against Plunket could not be true, and that Charles said the Earl might have saved him by saying as much at the trial, but that he himself dared not pardon him. Burnet seems to admit the royal plea as to Coleman because 'the tide went so high.' But two and a half years later it had much subsided, and there was little to be afraid of after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. At the time of Plunket's trial Hetherington, who had contrived his arrest, was in prison for seditious speeches. A cloud of Irish witnesses continued to obscure the truth, and the weapon which Shaftesbury had sharpened was soon turned against him. David Fitzgerald shifted with the tide, and from being an informer became conspicuous against the plot, and declared his intention to 'break Shaftesbury's knot.' He said he could get forty Irishmen for 40_l._ to swear whatever he wished, and that Hetherington and the other witnesses were all rogues, thieves, gaolbreakers, and turbulent persons. Soon after the judicial murder of Plunket Ormonde began an action of _scandalum magnatum_ against Hetherington, who was bailed by Richard Rumbold, the Rye House conspirator. The evidence at the trial was strong and the defence weak, so that a substantial Surrey jury found a verdict without leaving the Court. The damages were assessed at 10,000_l._, though Ormonde had only asked for 1000_l._, and Hetherington went to prison in default of payment. Shaftesbury had already died in exile, and the Irish witnesses were no longer paid or countenanced. Ormonde had long before said they were all perjurers who 'went out of Ireland with bad English and worse clothes and returned well bred gentlemen, well caronated, periwigged and clothed. Brogues and leather straps are converted to fashionable shoes and glittering buckles, which next to the zeal tories, thieves, and friars have for the Protestant religion, is a main inducement to bring in a shoal of informers.... The worst is they are so miserably poor that we are fain to give them some allowance; and they find it more honourable and safe to be the King's evidence than a cowstealer, though that be their natural profession.[130] [Sidenote: Castlehaven's Memoirs.] [Sidenote: Anglesey answers him.]