On 28 September (Sir) Roger L'Estrange wrote to Henry Bennet (afterwards Earl of Arlington) that he had Wallis in custody.
In a petition to Arlington, Wallis affirmed that he ‘only touched the priests that they may learn better manners, and will scribble as much against fanatics, when the worm gets into his cracked pate, as it did when he wrote those books.’ In April 1665 he was examined before the Privy Council for a new pamphlet, ‘Magna Charta, or More News from Rome’ (the British Museum has a copy with title ‘Or Magna Charta; More News from Rome,’ 1666, 4to).
On 15 April 1665 William Nicholson (1591–1672), bishop of Gloucester, wrote to Sheldon that, ‘though much favour had been shown him’ (he had specially attacked Nicholson), ‘he sells the books publicly in the town and elsewhere, and glories in them.’ In his last known pamphlet, ‘Room for the Cobler of Gloucester’ (1668, 4to), which L'Estrange calls (24 April 1668) ‘the damnedest thing has come out yet,’ he tells a story which is commonly regarded as the property of Maria Edgeworth, ‘The Lord Bishop is much like that Hog, that, when some Children were eating Milk out of a Dish that stood upon a Stool, thrust his Snowt into the Dish, and drank up all; not regarding the Children, who cryed, “Take a Poon, Pig, take a Poon”’.
[2] He died in 1668–9; the burial register of St. Mary de Crypt, Gloucester, has the entry ‘Randulphus Wallis fanaticæ memoriæ sepult.
Feby 9.’ In 1670 appeared a tract entitled ‘The Life and Death of Ralph Wallis, the Cobler of Gloucester, together with some inquiry into the Mystery of Conventicleism;’ it gives, however, no biographical particulars.