Caesar and Prince, having been tried and convicted of felony, were sentenced to be hanged.  The record says,—­

“Monday, 11th of May.  Caesar and Prince were executed this day at the gallows, according to sentence:  they died very stubbornly, without confessing any thing about the conspiracy:  and denied that they knew any thing about it to the last.  The body of Caesar was accordingly hung in chains."[248]

On the 13th of May, 1741, a solemn fast was observed; “because many houses and dwellings had been fired about our ears, without any discovery of the cause or occasion of them, which had put us into the utmost consternation.”  Excitement ran high.  Instead of getting any light on the affair, the plot thickened.

On the 6th of May, Hughson, his wife, and Peggy Carey had been tried and found guilty, as has already been stated.  Sarah Hughson, daughter of the Hughsons, was in jail.  Mary Burton was the heroine of the hour.  Her word was law.  Whoever she named was produced in court.  The sneak-thief, Arthur Price, was employed by the judges to perform a mission that was at once congenial to his tastes and in harmony with his criminal education.  He was sent among the incarcerated Negroes to administer punch, in the desperate hope of getting more “confessions!” Next, he was sent to Sarah Hughson to persuade her to accuse her father and mother of complicity in the conspiracy.  He related a conversation he had with Sarah, but she denied it to his teeth with great indignation.  This vile and criminal method of securing testimony of a conspiracy never brought the blush to the cheek of a single officer of the law.  “None of these things moved” them.  They were themselves so completely lost in the general din and excitement, were so thoroughly convinced that a plot existed, and that it was their duty to prove it in some manner or other,—­that they believed every thing that went to establish the guilt of any one.

Even a feeble-minded boy was arrested, and taken before the grand jury.  He swore that he knew nothing of the plot to burn the town, but the kind magistrates told him that if he would tell the truth he should not be hanged.  Ignorant as these helpless slaves were, they now understood “telling the truth” to mean to criminate some one in the plot, and thus gratify the inordinate hunger of the judges and jury for testimony relating to a “conspiracy.”  This Negro imbecile began his task of telling “what he knew,” which was to be rewarded by allowing him to leave without being hung!  He deposed that Quack desired him to burn the fort; that Cuffee said he would fire one house, Curacoa Dick another, and so on ad infinitum.  He was asked by one of the learned gentlemen, “what the Negroes intended by all this mischief?” He answered, “To kill all the gentlemen and take their wives; that one of the fellows already hanged, was to be an officer in the Long Bridge Company, and the other, in the Fly Company."[249]