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{1671.} This is the last time that the peers have revived any
pretensions of that nature. Ever since, the privilege of the commons,
in all other places except in the house of peers, has passed for
uncontroverted.
There was another private affair transacted about this time, by which
the king was as much exposed to the imputation of a capricious lenity,
as he was here blamed for unnecessary severity. Blood, a disbanded
officer of the protector's, had been engaged in the conspiracy for
raising an insurrection in Ireland; and on account of this crime,
he himself had been attainted, and some of his accomplices capitally
punished. The daring villain meditated revenge upon Ormond, the lord
lieutenant. Having by artifice drawn off the duke's footmen, he attacked
his coach in the night time, as it drove along St. James's Street in
London; and he made himself master of his person. He might here have
finished the crime, had he not meditated refinements in his vengeance:
he was resolved to hang the duke of Tyburn and for that purpose bound
him and mounted him on horseback behind one of his companions. They were
advanced a good way into the fields, when the duke, making efforts for
his liberty, threw himself to the ground, and brought down with him the
assassin to whom he was fastened.


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