Prance did not stop at his evidence on the subject of the murder, but went on to give information as to the Plot. Unless he had done so he could hardly have hoped to escape from prison, for it would seem incredible to the authorities that he should know so much and yet not know more. Perhaps too he was bitten with the excitement and glory of an informer’s life. His evidence was not however calculated to assist materially the party whose interest it was to prosecute the plot. He had already aroused annoyance by contradicting Bedloe’s evidence concerning the murder.[297] He now proceeded to spin out a string of utterly ridiculous stories about the Jesuits and other Roman Catholics. All that was important in his evidence was hearsay or directed against men who had already to contend against weightier accusations. He declared that Fenwick, Ireland, and Grove had told him that four of the five Popish lords were “to command the army.”[298] They had for some time past been in prison in the Tower on far more direct charges. At the trial of Ireland and Grove Prance was not produced as a witness at all. At the trial of Whitbread, Fenwick, and Harcourt he made the same statement. Fenwick had told him also that he need not fear to lose his trade in the case of civil war, for he should have plenty of work to do in making church ornaments.[299] These stories were again retailed at the trials of Langhorn and Wakeman.[300] When he was summoned as a witness against Lord Stafford he could say no more than that one Singleton, a priest, had told him “that he would make no more to stab forty parliament men than to eat his dinner.”[301] Much of his evidence about the Plot was so ludicrous that it could never be brought into court at all. Four men were to kill the Earl of Shaftesbury and went continually with pistols in their pockets. One Bradshaw, an upholsterer, had said openly in a tavern that it was no more sin to kill a Protestant than to kill a dog, and that “he was resolved to kill some of the busy lords.” It was the commonest talk among Roman Catholics that the king and Lord Shaftesbury were to be murdered. It was equally an ordinary subject of conversation that a great army was to be raised for the extirpation of heretics. A surgeon, named Ridley, had often told him “that he hoped to be chirurgeon to the Catholic army in England”; and when he complimented one Moore, a servant of the Duke of Norfolk, upon “a very brave horse” which he was riding, “Moore wished that he had ten thousand of them, and hoped in a short time that they might have them for the Catholic cause.” In his publication Prance added to this a disquisition on the immorality of the secular priests, among whom he had at the time two brothers.[302] So tangled and nonsensical a tale could be a source of strength to no prosecution. Dr. Lloyd was alarmed at the extent and facility of Prance’s new information.[303] Bishop Burnet thought, “It looked very