1663   

22nd. February Sunday
Some  persons in authority in Manchester are said to have tried to hatch a pretended conspiracy in order to get into their power the persons and estates of the Independents, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and Fifth-Monarchy men in a very rare tract, Eye-Salve for England; or, the Grand Trappan detected. By Evan Price (London, 1667). In this narrative Price states that Nicholas Mosley, a magistrate, came to him 22nd February and offered him £1,000, or a tenth of the forfeited estates, to swear evidence against those implicated in a conspiracy against the Government. Price refused, and was arrested and committed to Lancaster Assizes, where the judges also tried to induce him to turn King's evidence. He was said to have been the secret messenger of the conspirators. The High Sheriff, he says, renewed Mosley's offer. One of the leaders of the alleged plot was Lord Delamere, but Mosley having acknowledged in an unguarded moment that the name of that nobleman had been first named to Price by the judges, Lord Delamere began an action against Mosley, which was stopped by a letter from London ordering the justices to apologize. Lord Delamere insisted upon the release of Price, who was accordingly set at liberty at the Lent Assizes of 1664. In August, 1665, he was again arrested, but after a short imprisonment released. (Earwaker's Local Gleanings, vol. iii., pp. 361, 421.)(7)