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336 twenty-five of them, and colonel Finch and Henshaw were to bring the other five. Vowel, a schoolmaster of Islington, was very zealous in the plot, and engaged in procuring arms; and Billingsley, a butcher of Smithfield, engaged to seize the troopers' horses grazing in Islington fields. The soldiers wore then to be fallen upon at the mews, Charles II. proclaimed, Rupert was to appear with a large force of royalists, English, Irish, and Scotch, and there was to be a general rising. Saturday, the 20th of May, was the day fixed for Cromwell's assassination; but before this wild scheme could be commenced, forty of the conspirators were seized, some of them in their beds. Vowel was hanged, and Gerard was beheaded on the 10th of July—the manner of the latter's punishment being thus changed at his own request, being a gentleman and a soldier.

Cromwell Dissolving the Parliament

The same day, and on the same scaffold as Gerard, was executed Don Pantaleon Sa, the brother of the Portuguese ambassador. Sa had a quarrel with this same Gerard, who was called "Generous Gerard," an enthusiastic royalist. They came to fighting at the Royal Exchange, where Gerard, drawing his rapier, forced the Don to fly, whereupon the next day he returned to the Exchange in search of Gerard, with a body of armed followers, and mistaking a man of the name of Greenway for Gerard, they killed him, wounded colonel Mayo, and were not subdued without much riot. Sa was sezied, tried, and condemned for this