a villain.... I shall shake all such fellows before I am done". When Dangerfield protested publicly that he had sincerely repented of his former crimes, Scroggs, who did not tolerate interruptions in his Court, roared: "What, do you with all the mischief that Hell hath in you, dare to brave it in a court of justice?" Dangerfield, when examined at the bar of the House of Commons, made other charges against prominent Roman Catholics, and attempted to defend his character by publishing, among other pamphlets, Dangerfield's Narrative. Death; the fate of Robert Francis The publication of his Narrative led, once public opinion had turned against the informers, to his trial for libel (Kenyon notes that he could not as the law stood be tried for perjury, as no-one had actually been convicted on his evidence). Dangerfield went into hiding in 1684 as soon as he heard about the threatened trial, but when James succeeded as King in February 1685 the new Government made a determined search for him and found him. He was tried and speedily convicted. On 20 June 1685 he received his sentence, which was to stand in the pillory on two consecutive days, be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and two days later from Newgate to Tyburn. On his way back from the first whipping on 22 June Dangerfield, who rather surprisingly was travelling by coach, got into an argument at Hatton Garden with a barrister, Robert Francis, who made a jeering remark, on the lines of "How do you, after your little race?" Dangerfield in return spat on him and called him a son of a whore, whereupon Francis struck Dangerfield in the eye with his cane: the cane apparently entered the brain, and Dangerfield died shortly afterwards from the blow. Francis was tried and convicted for murder, and sentenced to death, despite his insistence that he never meant to kill Dangerfield. Several witnesses testified that on the contrary he had deliberately stabbed at Dangerfield's eye, and there was also some evidence that he had said that "he would save the hangman the trouble of killing Dangerfield". Nonetheless the verdict of murder came as a surprise to the public, the general view being that the death "could scarce be even called manslaughter". Sir John Reresby wrote that he was sure that Francis had had no intention of killing Dangerfield, "for he had a sword by his