The interest which his many noble and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity should not save him from assassination.

A similar warning was sent to Shrewsbury.

Threatening letters were then much more rare than they afterwards became.

It is therefore not strange that the people, excited as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish daggers.

[318] Just when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of a noted Puritan was found in the streets.