"'Twas strange any man should concern himself in an affair of this moment on the information of a boy ten years old, who had denied all after he had confess'd it, and did at his tryall, and make all this rent that was about it."
April 21st, 1684.--"Mr. Laurence Braddon and Mr. Hugh Speke, convicted last term upon an endeavour to lay the murder of the late Earl of Essex upon the Government, were brought to the Court of King's Bench to receive their judgments; which was, that Braddon should pay a fine of £2000, and Speke £1000 to the King; that they find sureties for their good behaviour during their lives, and be committed to the King's Bench prison till they doe so."
Hugh Speke, who was tried along with Laurence Braddon, was an inveterate plotter. Macaulay thus describes him: "Hugh Speke (was) a young man of good family, but of a singularly base and depraved nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways amounted almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found out was his business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using honest enthusiasts as the instruments of his cold-blooded malice."
Referring to the case of Braddon, Macaulay adds: "He had attempted, by means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and James the crime of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the agency of Speke had been traced; and though he succeeded in throwing the greater part of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity."
He was certainly a clever scoundrel, for he managed to cover up most of his traces in the affair of the charge of the murder of Essex.
Braddon was sincere, while Speke was not. Braddon was convinced that a murder had been committed, and he had not a well-balanced mind to weigh evidence. Speke cared nothing whether crime had been committed or not so long as he could disturb men's minds with a suspicion that one had been committed, and that by the King's brother and heir presumptive to the Crown.
The evidence produced by Laurence Braddon was practically worthless. He had but the word of two little children, and the boy had retracted and acknowledged that he had told lies. As to the fact of the death of Lord Essex being known at Frome on the 13th, showing that the murder had been premeditated and was part of a widely ramified scheme of the Papists, it was shown that nothing was known there of it till many days later.