His revelations were received and recorded by commissioners who had no need to ‘bribe or brow-beat him,’ as they were accused of doing in other cases. Patten ‘was used in the most gentleman-like manner.’ His treachery was quickened by their politeness, and the Rev. Robert Patten saved everything but honour. Patten had first, however, to satisfy the Government that his testimony was worth having. He made full confession, not only of what he knew of others, but of his own preachings and practices. He told of his more than ordinary activity at Penrith, where he had once been curate; how, in obedience to orders from Forster, he had headed a troop of horse and beset the house of his own brother-in-law, Mr. Johnston, collector of the Salt Tax, whom he was charged to bring in prisoner, with his books, papers, and, above all, with whatever money he had belonging to the Government. Johnston, however, escaped, taking documents and money with him. Patten, unwilling to return empty-handed, made prisoners of the _posse-comitatus_ and brought them to Forster’s camp, where they were despoiled of their arms, and then turned loose. At Preston he acknowledged that he was constantly riding from one post to another, giving accounts of how the battle was proceeding, and doing in fact aide-de-camp’s work till his horse was shot under him. He thus succeeded in being accepted as king’s evidence. [Sidenote: _ADDISON’S SATIRE._] Before his evidence was wanted, partisan newspapers mocked and misrepresented the unfortunate prisoners, as was only natural in _them_; but it is with pain that one sees Addison flinging dirt at them and ridiculing them, in his paper, the ‘Freeholder.’ In an imaginary diary of a Preston rebel, given in one of the numbers, the diarist is made to state that, at a meeting of Jacobites, before the outbreak, a resolution was passed that, as no cause existed for that outbreak, they would rebel first and give reasons for it afterwards. All Jacobites, it was agreed, were in want of something, and if they could overturn the throne and King George with it, carry fire and sword into England, as their chaplains recommended in their sermons, and divide property amongst themselves, there would be a fair chance of happiness under a new state of things, for the accomplishment of which they had had the prayers of all the harlots in the kingdom! [Sidenote: _LACK OF CHARITY._]