In the following year Cromwell made a raid among the officers of the Cavalier party, many of whom were seized and cashiered, Major-General Overton being sent to the Tower. Two other generals came there to bear him company in the same year, Generals Penn and Venables. They had made a disastrously unsuccessful expedition to the West Indies, which so exasperated Cromwell that on their return he ordered both of them to be imprisoned. A year later the Lieutenant of the Tower was ordered to release “one that goes by the name of Lucy Barlow, who for some time hath been a prisoner in the Tower of London. She passeth under the character of Charles Stuart’s wife; and hath a young son whom she openly declareth to be his; and it is generally believed; the boy being very like him; and both the mother and child provided for by him” (“Mercuris Politicus,” 1656). This Lucy Barlow was better known later on as Lucy Walters, and her son, who was then, and for some time to come, known by the name of James Crofts, became Duke of Monmouth. Clarendon describes at some length the strange story of the death in the Tower, in 1657, of Miles Syndercombe, once an intimate friend of Cromwell’s, but who for some unknown reason became involved in one of the many plots for assassinating the Protector. Syndercombe was sentenced to death, and it being expected that an attempt at his rescue might take place, he was most carefully guarded in his prison. On the morning of the day fixed for the execution, however, Syndercombe was found dead in his bed, but nevertheless the corpse was dragged at a horse’s tail to the place of execution, a stake being driven through it after it was buried: Cromwell’s enemies accused him of having caused his former friend to be poisoned. Cromwell, who, with all his natural courage lived in constant terror of assassination, in 1658 ordered all Royalists to live twenty miles away from London, and sent Colonel Russell, Sir William Compton, and Sir William Clayton, together with Henry Mordaunt, Lord Peterborough’s brother, to the Tower. Mordaunt had been in the young King’s employment, and, with a Dr Hewet, was put upon his trial for conspiracy. Mordaunt was acquitted, but Hewet was found guilty, and beheaded on Tower Hill. Another eminent Royalist, Sir Henry Slingsby, a great Yorkshire magnate who had fought for Charles, was also beheaded in the same year.