We have seen that Shaftesbury and his party had been seriously contemplating an insurrection to compel Charles to adopt measures for securing a Protestant succession which they could not persuade him to, and that the efforts of the arch-agitator and his agents, West, Ferguson, Rouse, Rumsey, Walcot, and others, to excite the nobles of the Whig party to action, had proved abortive and induced Shaftesbury to fly. Unfortunately, the royal party being now in the full tide of retribution, the more contemptible portion of those who had been most active in carrying on the Whig aggressions began to consider what was to be gained by betraying their associates. On the 1st of June a Scotsman was arrested on suspicion at Newcastle, and on him was found a letter, which indicated agreement between the Opposition parties in Scotland and England. A quick inquiry was set on foot after further traces of the alarming facts; and on the 12th, the very day on which judgment was pronounced against the City, Josiah Keeling, a man who had been extremely prominent in the late contests about the sheriffs, and who had displayed his zeal by actually laying hands on the Lord Mayor Moore, for his support of the Government, now waited on Lord Dartmouth, the Duke of York's close friend, and informed him of particulars of the late schemes, as if they were yet actively in operation against the king's life. Dartmouth took the informer to Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State, who had been extremely active in the proceedings against the City. The story which Keeling laid before Sir Leoline was to the following appalling purport:—That in the month of March last, when the king and Duke of York were about to proceed to Newmarket, to the races, Goodenough, the late Under Sheriff, one of Shaftesbury's most busy men in the City, lamenting the slavery to which the City was fast being reduced, asked him how many men he could engage to kill the king and the duke too; that he had repeated the same question to him whilst the king and the duke were there; and that he then consented to join the plot, and to endeavour to procure accomplices. Accordingly, he engaged Burton, a cheesemonger, Thompson, a carver, and Barber, an instrument-maker of Wapping. They then met with one Rumbold, a maltster at the "Mitre" Tavern, without Aldgate, where it was settled to go down to a house that Rumbold had, called the Rye House, on the River Lea, near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, and there execute their design. This house lay conveniently by the wayside, and a number of men concealed under a fence could easily shoot down the king's postilion and horses, and then kill him and the duke, and the four guards with them. If they failed to stop the carriage, a man placed with a cart and horse in a cross lane a few paces farther on was to run his horse and cart athwart the road, and there stop it, till they had completed their design. From this circumstance the plot obtained the name of the Rye House Plot.

At a subsequent meeting at the "Dolphin," behind the Exchange, there was a disagreement as to the time when the king would return, and thus they missed the opportunity, for Rumbold, who went down, said the king and duke passed the place with only five Life-Guards. Various other plans were then laid—one to cut off the king between Windsor and Hampton Court.

Secretary Jenkins, after listening to this recital, told Keeling that it would require another witness to establish a charge of treason against the conspirators, and Keeling fetched his brother John, who swore with him to these and many other particulars—namely, that Goodenough had organised a plan for raising twenty districts in the City, and that twenty thousand pounds were to be distributed amongst the twenty managers of these districts; that the Duke of Monmouth was to head the insurrection, a person called the colonel was to furnish one thousand pounds, and different men in different parts of the country were to raise their own neighbourhoods; that the murder was now to come off at the next bull-feast in Red Lion Fields. Two days afterwards they added that Goodenough had informed them that Lord William Russell would enter heart and soul into the design of killing the king and the Duke of York.

A proclamation was immediately issued for the arrest of Rumbold, Colonel Rumsey, Walcot, Wade, Nelthorp, Thompson, Burton, and Hone; but it was supposed that John Keeling, who had been reluctantly dragged into the affair by Josiah, had given them warning, and they had all got out of the way. Barber, the instrument-maker of Wapping, however, was taken, and declared that he had never understood that the design was against the king, but only against the duke. West soon surrendered himself, and, in hope of pardon, gave most extensive evidence against Ferguson and a dozen others; like Oates and Bedloe, continually adding fresh facts and dragging in fresh people. He said Ferguson had brought money to buy arms; that Wildman had been furnished with means to buy arms; that Lord Howard of Escrick had gone deeply into it; that Algernon Sidney and Wildman were in close correspondence with the conspirators in Scotland; that at meetings held at the "Devil Tavern," it was projected to shoot the king in a narrow street as he was returning from the theatre; that they had hinted something of their design to the Duke of Monmouth, but not the killing part of it, but that he had sternly replied they must look on him as a son; and then the relations of this wretched turncoat lawyer assumed all the wildness of a Bluebeard story. Ferguson would hear of nothing but killing. The new Lord Mayor, the new sheriffs Rich and North, were to be killed, and their skins stuffed and hung up in Guildhall; the judges were to be flayed, too, and their skins suspended in Westminster Hall and other great traitors were to have their skins hung up in the Parliament House.

THE RYE HOUSE.

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Next, Rumsey turned informer, and, improving as he went on, he also accused Lord William Russell, Mr. Trenchard, Roe, the Sword-Bearer of Bristol, the Duke of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Armstrong, Lord Grey, and Ferguson. He had, he said, met most of these persons at Shepherd's, a wine-merchant, near Lombard Street, and nothing less was intended by most of them than killing the king and his brother. Trenchard had promised a thousand foot and three hundred horse in the West, and Ferguson had engaged to raise twelve hundred Scots who had fled to England after the battle of Bothwell Bridge. Shepherd, the wine-merchant, was called, and said that Shaftesbury, before going to Holland, the Duke of Monmouth, Lords William Russell and Grey, Armstrong, Rumsey, and Ferguson had met at his house, and, he was informed, had talked about securing his Majesty's Guards, and had walked about the Court end of the town at night, and reported a very remiss state of the Guards on duty. He added that as the design had not obtained sufficient support, so far as he knew, it was laid aside.

On the 26th of June a proclamation was issued for the apprehension of Monmouth, Grey, Russell, Armstrong, Walcot, and others. Monmouth, Grey, Armstrong, and Ferguson escaped; Lord William Russell, Sidney, Essex, Wildman, Howard of Escrick, Walcot, and others were taken, then or soon after. Russell was the first secured. He was found quietly seated in his library, and though the messengers had walked to and fro for some time before his door, as if wishing him to get away, he took no steps towards it, but as soon as the officer had shown his warrant, he went with him as though he had been backed by a troop. When examined before the Council, he is said, even by his own party, to have made but a feeble defence. He admitted having been at Shepherd's, but only to buy wines. He understood that some of those whom he had seen there were a crowd of dangerous designers; he should not, therefore, mention them, but only the Duke of Monmouth, against whom there could be no such charge. He denied that he had heard there anything about a rising in the West or in Scotland, but only that in the latter country there were many people in distress, ministers and others, whom it would be a great charity to relieve. He was committed to the Tower, and on entering it he said he was sworn against, and they would have his life. His servant replied that he hoped matters were not so bad as that, but he rejoined, "Yes! the devil is loose!" He saw the course things were taking; the spirit that was in the ascendant; he knew that he had entered into revolutionary schemes sufficiently for his condemnation, and that the Duke of York, who had an old hatred for him, would never let him escape.

Lord Howard was one of the last arrested. He went about after the arrest of several of the others, declaring that there really was no plot; that he knew of none; yet after that it is asserted, and strong evidence adduced for it, that to save his own life he had made several offers to the Court to betray his kinsman Russell. Four days before Russell's trial, a serjeant-at-arms, attended by a troop of horse, was sent to Howard's house at Knightsbridge, and after a long search discovered him in his shirt in the chimney of his room. His conduct when taken was most cowardly and despicable, and fully justified the character that he had of being one of the most perfidious and base of men. He wept, trembled, and entreated, and begging a private interview with the king and duke, he betrayed his associates to save himself. Russell had always had a horror and suspicion of him, but he had managed to captivate Sidney by his vehement professions of Republicanism, and by Sidney and Essex he had been induced to tolerate the traitor. The Earl of Essex was taken at his house at Cassiobury, and was escorted to town by a party of horse. He might have escaped through the assistance of his friends, but he deemed that his flight would tend to condemn his friend Russell, and he refused.