Thomas Dangerfield’s Ansvver to a certain scandalous paper, entituled, The Kings Evidence Vindicated, as to the imputation of perjury.

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Of Thomas Dangerfield

Dangerfield was born about 1650 at Waltham Abbey, Essex, the son of a farmer. At the age of about 12 in about 1662, he ran away from home to London, and never returned to his home.

He began his career of crime by robbing his father of both horses and money, and, after a rambling life, which brought him to Scotland, France, Spain and Portugal, took to coining counterfeit money, for which offence and numerous others he was many times imprisoned: it was said later that to describe his career one need simply list every capital crime known to English law. Lord Chief Justice Scroggs later referred to him with contempt as “that fellow from Chelmsford gaol”, and he also spent time in Newgate Prison. He used a number of aliases, most commonly Willoughby.

Popish Plot

False to everyone, he first tried to involve James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth and others by concocting information about a Presbyterian plot against the throne, and this having been proved a lie, he pretended to have discovered a Catholic plot against Charles II. This was known as the Mealtub Plot, from the place where the incriminating documents were hidden at his suggestion, and found by the King’s officers by his information.

Mrs Elizabeth Cellier, in whose house the meal tub was found, was a well- known Roman Catholic midwife and almoner to Elizabeth Herbert, Marchioness of Powis. She had rescued Dangerfield from a debtors’ prison and befriended him when he posed as a Catholic. She was, with her patroness Lady Powis, tried for high treason but acquitted in 1680: with the general waning of hysteria, men as disreputable as Dangerfield were no longer considered to be credible witnesses.

For a time Dangerfield was used as a secondary witness in the Popish Plot trials to supplement the evidence of Titus Oates and William Bedloe. However his character was so unsavoury, even compared to that of the other informers, that Chief Justice William Scroggs, who knew his record of crime thoroughly, began instructing juries to disregard the evidence of “so notorious 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 and Thomas Dangerfield’s Answer, where he attempts to defend himself against perjury.