Island, admitted that he was “bred up a priest;” that one Holt, a dancing-master, also knew of the plot; and then described the mystic ceremony of swearing the plotters.  He said, “There was a black ring made on the floor, about a foot and a half in diameter; and Hughson bid every one put off the left shoe and put their toes within the ring; and Mrs. Hughson held a bowl of punch over their heads, as the Negroes stood around the circle, and Hughson pronounced the oath above mentioned, (something like a freemason’s oath and penalties,) and every negro severally repeated the oath after him, and then Hughson’s wife fed them with a draught out of the bowl.”

This was “new matter,” so to speak, and doubtless broke the monotony of the daily recitals to which their honors had been listening all summer.  Kane was about to deprive Mary Burton of her honors; and, as he could not write, he made his mark.  A peddler named Coffin was arrested and examined.  He denied all knowledge of the plot, never saw Hughson, never was at his place, saw him for the first time when he was executed; had never seen Kane but once, and then at Eleanor Waller’s, where they drank beer together.  But the court committed him.  Kane and Mary Burton accused Edward Murphy.  Kane charged David Johnson, a hatter, as one of the conspirators; while Mary Burton accuses Andrew Ryase, “little Holt,” the dancing-master, John Earl, and seventeen soldiers,—­all of whom were cast into prison.

On the 16th of July nine Negroes were arraigned:  four plead guilty, two were sentenced to be burnt, and the others to be hanged.  On the next day seven Negroes plead guilty.  One John Schultz came forward, and made a deposition that perhaps had some little influence on the court and the community at large.  He swore that a Negro man slave, named Cambridge, belonging to Christopher Codwise, Esq., did on the 9th of June, 1741, confess to the deponent, in the presence of Codwise and Richard Baker, that the confession he had made before Messrs. Lodge and Nichols was entirely false; viz., that he had confessed himself guilty of participating in the conspiracy; had accused a Negro named Cajoe through fear; that he had heard some Negroes talking together in the jail, and saying that if they did not confess they would be hanged; that what he said about Horsefield Caesar was a lie; that he had never known in what section of the town Hughson lived, nor did he remember ever hearing his name, until it had become the town talk that Hughson was concerned in a plot to burn the town and murder the inhabitants.

This did not in the least abate the zeal of Mary Burton and William Kane.  They went on in their work of accusing white people and Negroes, receiving the approving smiles of the magistrates.  Mary Burton says that John Earl, who lived in Broadway, used to come to Hughson’s with ten soldiers at a time; that these white men were to command the Negro companies; that John Ury used to be present; and that a man near the Mayor’s Market, who kept a shop where she (Mary Burton) got rum from, a doctor, by nationality a Scotchman, who lived by the Slip, and another dancing-master, named Corry, used to meet with the conspirators at Hughson’s tavern.