On June 7 another declaration was published by the king, condemning the libel, denouncing its falsehood, and forbidding all subjects on pain of the utmost rigour of the law to utter anything contrary to the royal pronouncement. The result was a second “Letter to a Person of Honour,” in which Charles’ word was contradicted and his motives traduced. All the former statements were repeated, some arguments added, and the pamphlet ended by the modest proposals, “That Parliament, being admitted to sit, may examine this affair, whereof they alone are competent judges; and that the Duke of York may be legally tried for his manifold treasons and conspiracies against the king and kingdom,” which treasons were set out at length in thirty-four articles.[435] To carry the war still further into the enemies’ camp, on June 26 Shaftesbury appeared in Westminster Hall in company with the Earl of Huntingdon, Lord Grey, Lord Gerard, Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and nine commoners to present the Duke of York to the grand jury as a popish recusant and to indict the Duchess of Portsmouth for a national nuisance. With them went Titus Oates, invested as it were with a representative authority on behalf of the Whig party. That both charges were true is certain; but the action of the Whigs was dictated by a purely partisan spirit, and Chief Justice Scroggs, judging the fact so, discharged the jury before they could find a bill. Four days later the attack was repeated in another court, and with the same result. The judges only followed their chief’s example. James appeared downcast and knew well what danger he ran. His adversaries seemed to be throwing off the mask, strong in the support of which they were assumed to be conscious. When it was told to Shaftesbury that the king had railed at him and his party as seditious rebels, he replied aloud and in public, “The king has nothing to do but take the pains to punish rebels and seditious persons. We will keep with the bounds of the law, and we shall easily find means by the law to make him walk out of the kingdom.” There were not many who could boast of having the last laugh in a game with Charles. Not many months after, when the law by which he held was put into operation against the Whig leader, Charles heard that Shaftesbury had accused him of suborning perjurers, and thereupon very pleasantly quoted a Scotch proverb. Veiled in the decency of a learned language it ran: “In die extremi judicii videbimus cui podex nigerrimus sit.”[436]