Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/254

238 This was no other than to prepare round pieces of metal, resembling shillings, by polishing, filing, and colouring them; the room in Moor lane having been previously hired, and the materials prepared by the conspirators. In this miserable hole, after a few hours labour, the three innocent men were set upon by persons they had not before seen, conveyed to prison, and in a very few days were arraigned for treason in imitating the coin of the realm, for which the sentence is to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

Enjoying this horrid sight, so congenial to his feelings, wishes, and views, was Pelham,—one of the conspirators who had hired the three victims in Cheapside,—recognised, as he attended at the press yard of the Old Bailey, by a labourer who was present at the hiring; after a struggle, and a hunt, Mr. Pelham was secured, and the plot, by the exertions of the lord Mayor (Wood), was laid bare.

All those six fellows were indicted by the city, for being accessory, before the facts, to the crimes imputed to their respective victims; upon the clearest evidence imaginable they were found guilty and received sentence of death; but after little more than a year's imprisonment we are struck aghast upon hearing they are to escape upon a quibble or less than a quibble. We are alarmed at the