strange, and added no credit to his other evidence that the papists should thus be talking of killing the king as if it had been a common piece of news.[304] And Warner, the Jesuit provincial, characterised Prance’s later evidence as of little scope and less weight.”[305] To how many persons Prance’s real position in the tortuous intrigues which circled round the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey was known is a question very difficult to answer. By the Jesuit writers on the Plot his character is treated with a moderation foreign to their attacks on the other informers. He is to them “a silversmith of no obscurity,” and “by far less guilty than the rest in the crimes of their past lives.”[306] It is hard to think that some of them were not acquainted with the part which he had played. There are stronger indications that within a select circle his true character was appreciated. When James II came to the throne Prance was brought to trial for perjury, and on June 15, 1686 pleaded guilty to the charge. The court treated him to a lecture in which his conduct was compared favourably to that of Oates, who had remained hardened to the end, and promised to have compassion on a true penitent. He was sentenced to pay a fine of a hundred pounds, to be three times pilloried for the space of an hour, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. The last and heaviest part of the punishment, the flogging, under which Oates’ iron frame had nearly sunk, was remitted by the king’s command.[307] There is considerable reason to believe that the trial was collusive and the result prearranged. That Prance should confess himself perjured is easy to understand: to understand why Prance’s sentence was lightened, unless it was in reward for good service done, would be very difficult. All the reasons which had worked before for the exculpation of the Roman Catholics from the guilt of Godfrey’s murder were now redoubled in force. Oates had already suffered for his crimes. The Popish Plot, as Sir John Reresby told James, was not only dead, but buried. To overthrow the Protestant story of Godfrey’s death would be to throw the last sod upon its grave. This was much; but James was not the man to forego without reason the sweetest part of his vengeance upon the witness who had set up that story. The rancour with which he pursued Oates and Dangerfield seemed to have completely vanished when the turn came to Prance. Prance had certainly diverted the investigation from James’ personal neighbourhood; but Oates had been saved nothing of his terrible punishment by the fact that he had cleared the Duke of York in his first revelation of the plot. The harm done by Dangerfield to the Catholic cause was nothing compared to that accomplished by Prance, if the surface of events told a true tale. Dangerfield was whipped, if not to death, at least to a point near it. But Prance was let off the lash. Without the flogging his sentence was trifling. James had no love for light sentences in themselves.