330

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CIIAP.

XX.

The Lan-cashireprosecu-tions.

Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish■ vagabond who had borne more than one name and had pro-. fessed more than one religion. He now called himself Taaffe.He had been a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, andsecretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since the Revolu-tion turned Protestant, had taken a rvife, and had distinguishedhimself by his activity in discovering the concealed propertyof those Jesuits and Benedictines who, during the late reign,had been quartered in London. The ministers despised him:but they trusted him. They thought that he had, by hisapostasy, and by the part which he had borne in the spoliationof the religious orders, cut himself off from all retreat, andthat, having nothing but a halter to expect from King James,he must be true to King William.*

This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, whohad, since the Revolution, been repeatedly employed amongthe discontented gentry of Cheshire and Lancashire, and whohad been privy to those plans of insurrection which had beendisconcerted by the battle of the Boyne in 1690, and by thebattle of La Hogue in 1692. Inmt had once been arrested onsuspicion of treason, but had been discharged for want of legalproof of his guilt. He w r as a mere hireling, and was, withoutmuch difficulty, induced by Taaffe to turn approver. The pairwent to Trenchard. Lunt told his story, mentioned the namesof some Cheshire and Lancashire squires to whom he had, ashe affirmed, carried commissions from Saint Germains, andof others, w r ho had, to his knowledge, formed secret hoardsof arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not have beensufficient to support a charge of high treason: but he producedanother witness -whose evidence seemed to make the case com-plete. The narrative was plausible and coherent; and indeed,

* Burnet, ii. 141, 142.; and Onslow’s note; Kingston’s True History,1697.