g the Middle Ages Fetter Lane slumbered, but it woke up on the
breaking out of the Civil War, and in 1643 became unpleasantly
celebrated as the spot where Waller's plot disastrously terminated.

In the second year of the war between King and Parliament, the Royal
successes at Bath, Bristol, and Cornwall, as well as the partial victory
at Edgehill, had roused the moderate party and chilled many lukewarm
adherents of the Puritans. The distrust of Pym and his friends soon
broke out into a reactionary plot, or, more probably, two plots, in one
or both of which Waller, the poet, was dangerously mixed up. The chief
conspirators were Tomkins and Challoner, the former Waller's
brother-in-law, a gentleman living in Holborn, near the end of Fetter
Lane, and a secretary to the Commissioners of the Royal Revenues; the
latter an eminent citizen, well known on 'Change. Many noblemen and
Cavalier officers and gentlemen had also a whispering knowledge of the
ticklish affair. The projects of these men, or of some of the more
desperate, at least, were--(1) to secure the king's children; (2) to
seize Mr. Pym, Colonel Hampden, and other members of Parliament
specially hostile to the king; (3) to arrest the Puritan Lord Mayor, and
all the sour-faced committee of the City Militia; (4) to capture the
outworks, forts, magazines, and gates of the Tower and City, and to
admit 3,000 Cavaliers sent from Oxford by a pre-arranged plan; (5) to
resist all payments imposed by Parliament for support of the armies of
the Earl of Essex. Unfortunately, just as the white ribbons were
preparing to tie round the arms of the conspirators, to mark them on the
night of action, a treacherous servant of Mr. Tomkins, of Holborn,
overheard Waller's plans from behind a convenient arras, and disclosed
them to the angry Parliament. In a cellar at Tomkins's the soldiers who
rummaged it found a commission sent from the king by Lady Aubigny, whose
husband had been recently killed at Edgehill.

Tomkins and Challoner were hung at the Holborn end of Fetter Lane. On
the ladder, Tomkins said:--"Gentlemen, I humbly acknowledge, in the
sight of Almighty God (to whom, and to angels, and to this great
assembly of people, I am now a spectacle), that my sins have deserved of
Him this untimely and shameful death; and, touching the business for
which I suffer, I acknowledge that affection to a brother-in-law, and
affection and gratitude to the king, whose bread I have eaten now about