were made in the household: even his
favorite navy was neglected: Tangiers, though it had cost great sums
of money, was a few years after abandoned and demolished. The mole was
entirely destroyed; and the garrison, being brought over to England,
served to augment that small army which the king relied on as the solid
basis of his authority. It had been happy for the nation, had Charles
used his victory with justice and moderation equal to the prudence and
dexterity with which he obtained it.

The first step taken by the court was the trial of Fitzharris. Doubts
were raised by the jury with regard to their power of trying him, after
the concluding vote of the commons: but the judges took upon them to
decide the question in the affirmative, and the jury were obliged to
proceed. The writing of the libel was clearly proved upon Fitzharris:
the only question was with regard to his intentions. He asserted, that
he was a spy of the court, and had accordingly carried the libel to the
duchess of Portsmouth; and he was desirous that the jury should, in
this transaction, consider him as a cheat, not as a traitor. He failed,
however, somewhat in the proof; and was brought in guilty of treason by
the jury.

Finding himself entirely in the hands of the king, he now retracted
all his former impostures with regard to the popish plot, and even
endeavored to atone for them by new impostures against the country
party. He affirmed, that these fictions had been extorted from him by
the suggestions and artifices of Treby, the recorder, and of Bethel
and Cornish, the two sheriffs: this account he persisted in even at his
execution; and though men knew that nothing could be depended on which
came from one so corrupt, and so lost to all sense of honor, yet were
they inclined, from his perseverance, to rely somewhat more on his
veracity in these last asseverations. But it appears that his wife had
some connections with Mrs. Wall, the favorite maid of the duchess of
Portsmouth; and Fitzharris hoped, if he persisted in a story agreeable
to the court, that some favor might, on that account, be shown to his
family.

It is amusing to reflect on the several lights in which this story has
been represented by the opposite factions. The country party affirmed,
that Fitzharris had been employed by the court, in order to throw the
odium of the libel on the exclusionists, and thereby give rise to a
Protestant plot: the court party maintained, that the e