The case of Knox and Lane was a still more disreputable affair. Thomas Knox was in the service of Lord Dumblane, the Earl of Danby’s son. John Lane and one William Osborne were servants to Titus Oates. These two were discharged by Oates in April 1679, Lane, who had some acquaintance with Dangerfield, was lodged by him and Mrs. Cellier under an assumed name at the house of the Countess of Powis.[664] At Dangerfield’s suggestion they approached Knox on the subject of the charges which Oates had made against the Lord Treasurer.[665] Knox agreed to their suggestion, and together they arranged the details of the scheme. Osborne and Knox lodged information that Oates had conspired with Bedloe to bring false accusations against Lord Danby, while Lane charged his master with using obscene language concerning the king and with the commission of an unnatural crime. But under examination Knox and Lane broke down, and all three were driven to confess that there was not a word of truth in the story which they had concocted. Osborne fled the country, and his two accomplices were clapped into gaol. News however was brought to Lane as he lay in prison that Knox was prepared to stand by his original story. He forthwith retracted his confession, and on November 19, 1679 indictment was brought against Oates “for an attempt to commit upon him the horrid and abominable sin of sodomy.” The grand jury ignored the bill, and a week later the two miscreants were brought to the king’s bench bar on the charge of “a conspiracy to defame and scandalise Dr. Oates and Mr. Bedloe; thereby to discredit their evidence about the horrid Popish Plot.” After a long trial, in which the defendants were treated with all fairness and in which each attempted to throw the blame on the other, the jury returned a verdict of guilty without leaving the bar. The prisoners were sentenced to fine and imprisonment, and Lane in addition to stand for an hour in the pillory. The verdict was received with a shout of applause, “many noblemen, gentlemen, and eminent citizens,” adds the account which was drawn up under Oates’ direction, “coming with great expectations of the issue of this trial, which was managed with that justice, impartiality, and indifference between the king and the defendants, that some have been heard to say they could never believe a plot before, but now they were abundantly satisfied.”[666]