d formerly regarded him as the deliverer of his country,
shuddered at the sight of those hideous features on which villany seemed
to be written by the hand of God. [271]

It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had by
false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless persons. He
called in vain on the most eminent members of the Parliaments which had
rewarded and extolled him to give evidence in his favour. Some of those
whom he had summoned absented themselves. None of them said anything
tending to his vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon,
bitterly reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn on
them the guilt of shedding innocent blood. The Judges browbeat and
reviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most
atrocious cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed,
however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the storm of invective
which burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box, with the
insolence of despair. He was convicted on both indictments. His offence,
though, in a moral light, murder of the most aggravated kind, was, in
the eye of the law, merely a misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, was
desirous to make his punishment more severe than that of felons or
traitors, and not merely to put him to death, but to put him to death
by frightful torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical
habit, to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall
with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be pilloried
again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to
Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, to be whipped from Newgate
to Tyburn. If, against all probability, he should happen to survive this
horrible infliction, he was to be kept close prisoner during life. Five
times every year he was to be brought forth from his dungeon and exposed
on the pillory in different parts of the capital. [272] This rigorous
sentence was rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates was
pilloried in Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk of
being pulled in pieces. [273] But in the City his partisans mustered
in great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory. [274] They were,
however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that he would
try to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by swallowing poison.
All that he ate and drank was therefore carefully inspected.