In no part of the country was persecution more bitter than in Yorkshire. Even before the time of the Popish Plot Catholics in the country had been subjected to considerable annoyance, and when “the great crack and noise” of the event burst on the astonished ears of the world they became at once the object of vehement attack. Inquisition was made in all parts for priests and recusants. The cells of York Castle, of which the condition was notorious in an age of notorious prisons, were filled. To priests and their relatives particular attention was paid. Soon two scoundrels, by name Mowbray and Bolron, came forward to give evidence of the preparations of papists to aid in the grand design discovered by Oates. Bolron had been manager of coal-pits on the estate of Sir Thomas Gascoigne, an aged baronet and representative of the ancient family of Barnbow Hall in the West Riding, and, being suspected of fraud, was threatened with a prosecution for felony by Lady Tempest, the baronet’s daughter. Mowbray was a servant in the same family discharged on suspicion of theft. Thus the two had every reason to plot revenge. Bolron swore that Sir Thomas, together with his daughter, Sir Miles Stapleton, several other gentlemen, and his nephew, a priest named Thwing, had signed a resolution to kill the king and had offered a thousand pounds to whoever should do the deed. Mowbray added that they had intended to burn London and York to the ground. The Yorkshire magistrates refused to act on the information of known criminals, but Bolron went to town and found in Shaftesbury an inquisitor who would not consent to see the matter dropped.[354] Sir Thomas was tried at Westminster, but acquitted by a jury of Yorkshire gentlemen. Sir Miles Stapleton and Lady Tempest stood their trial at York. They also were acquitted, but upon the same discreditable evidence Thwing was convicted and on October 23, 1680 suffered the penalty for high treason. In spite of the fact that three juries had disbelieved his word Bolron was able by permission of the House of Commons to produce an ingenious forgery, entitled “The Papists’ Bloody Oath of Secrecy and Litany of Intercession,” which after repeated exposure and the lapse of more than two centuries is still sometimes taken for true by his more gullible, if less malignant, successors. For the moment the acquittal of Gascoigne and his friends stayed the flow of blood, but the Yorkshire Protestants shewed effectively by their conduct at the Revolution that their feelings remained unchanged.[355]