WILLIAM AND MAEY.

51

direction of affairs, that Oates should be set at liberty. Themotion was rejected:* but the gaolers, not knowing whom to ■obey in that time of anarchy, and desiring to conciliate a manwho had once been, and might perhaps again be, a terribleenemy, allowed their prisoner to go freely about the town.**His uneven legs and his hideous face, made more hideous bythe shearing which his ears had undergone, were now againseen every day in Westminster Hall and the Court of Re-quests.*** He fastened himself on his old patrons, and, in thatdrawl which he affected as a mark of gentility, gave them thehistory of his wrongs and of his hopes. It was impossible, hesaid, that now, when the good cause was triumphant, the dis-coverer of the plot could be overlooked. “Charles gaveme nine hundred pounds a year. Sure William will give memore.”f

In a few weeks he brought his sentence before the House ofLords by a writ of error. This is a species of appeal whichraises no question of fact. The Lords, while sitting judiciallyon the writ of error, were not competent to examine whetherthe verdict which pronounced Oates guilty was or was notaccording to the evidence. All that they had to consider waswhether, the verdict being supposed to be according to theevidence, the judgment was legal. But it would have beendifficult even for a tribunal composed of veteran magistrates,and was almost impossible for an assembly of noblemen who

* Halifax MS. in the British Museum.

** Epistle Dedicatory to Oates’s elx cov paaiXtxij.

*** In a ballad of the time are the following lines:

“ Come listen, ye Whigs, to my pitiful moan,

All you that have ears, when the Doctor has none.”

These lines must have been in Mason’s head when he wrote the couplet —“Witness, ye Ilills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbcares;

Hark to my call: for some of you have ears.”

+ North’s Examcn, 224. 254. , North says “six hundred a year.” ButI have taken the larger sum from the impudent petition which Oates ad-dressed to the Commons, July 25. 1689. See the Journals.

4 *

CFTAP

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