The lords, under sentence of death, in the Tower, continued to be reprieved from time to time. As various alterations in the process of the trials followed, it was not doubted, ‘Mercurius’ says, ‘but there had some light been given in return for that grace, by which further discoveries were made than had been before.’ If this be true, the baseness of such informers was more detestable than that of the Rev. Mr. Patten. This man began now to be treated by the public as a double-dyed rascal; and this treatment urged him to publish his reasons for turning king’s evidence, in a letter addressed to one of the Shaftoes, a rebel prisoner in Newgate. The letter is long and very wide of its pretended purpose. It affects indeed a certain horror of rebellion against the Church and Throne; and it insinuates that Shaftoe might do well to follow the example of the writer, who mendaciously pretended that in becoming a witness against his old confederates, no promise of pardon or of any advantage was made to him, and that he was utterly ignorant as to the way in which it might please God that he should die! [Sidenote: _PATTEN ON THE PRINCE OF WALES._] ‘I shall mention one particular,’ he says, ‘which has been a matter of astonishment to me to find out a Falsehood so industriously reported. I hope it will be so with you when I assure you it was industriously reported that the Prince of Wales, who was represented to us under the greatest disadvantages, as to the Shape and Frame of his Person, is quite the Reverse of all Reflections, for he has really a comely Appearance, and a Liveliness in his Looks and Gesture, which is very taking, and speaks a great deal of Goodness. This I beheld with Admiration at Westminster Hall, when I was present at the Trial of the Earl of Wintoun.’ Among a batch of 180 Jacobite convicts sent to Maryland, there was one who was both malefactor and Jacobite. His name was Wriggelsden. He was such a hater of King George, that he tried to carry off his Majesty’s plate from the Chapel Royal in Whitehall. The Tory thief was transported, but the Whig papers in London soon abounded with complaints that this enemy of kings and men was better off than he had ever been before. ‘He had got,’ says the News Letter, ‘a cargo of cutlery ware, and a Mistress like a Woman of Fashion, in rich clothes and a gold striking watch, with other proper equipage, at Annapolis, where they live with great show of affluence.’ The Whigs complained that knaves and traitors should thus flourish. They also complained that the sentinels at St. James’s Palace neglected to safely guard the prince and princess; that Tory inn-keepers cursed the king, even on his coronation-day, and that Nonjurors were not to be trusted, even though they took the oath of fidelity, like the Rev. Nicholas Zintens, who, they sneeringly say, ‘took the oath by mere impulse of conscience in the absence of his wife.’ [Sidenote: _IN AND OUT OF NEWGATE._]