The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 3

by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay

But the chief conspirator was Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, who had, in the late reign, been Secretary of State. Though a peer in Scotland, he was only a baronet in England. He had, indeed, received from Saint Germains an English patent of nobility; but the patent bore a date posterior to that flight which the Convention had pronounced an abdication. The Lords had, therefore, not only refused to admit him to a share of their privileges, but had sent him to prison for presuming to call himself one of their order. He had, however, by humbling himself, and by withdrawing his claim, obtained his liberty, [638] Though the submissive language which he had condescended to use on this occasion did not indicate a spirit prepared for martyrdom, he was regarded by his party, and by the world in general, as a man of courage and honour. He still retained the seals of his office, and was still considered by the adherents of indefeasible hereditary right as the real Secretary of State. He was in high favour with Lewis, at whose court he had formerly resided, and had, since the Revolution, been intrusted by the French government with considerable sums of money for political purposes, [639]

While Preston was consulting in the capital with the other heads of the faction, the rustic Jacobites were laying in arms, holding musters, and forming themselves into companies, troops, and regiments. There were alarming symptoms in Worcestershire. In Lancashire many gentlemen had received commissions signed by James, called themselves colonels and captains, and made out long lists of noncommissioned officers and privates. Letters from Yorkshire brought news that large bodies of men, who seemed to have met for no good purpose, had been seen on the moors near Knaresborough. Letters from Newcastle gave an account of a great match at football which had been played in Northumberland, and was suspected to have been a pretext for a gathering of the disaffected. In the crowd, it was said, were a hundred and fifty horsemen well mounted and armed, of whom many were Papists, [640]

Meantime packets of letters full of treason were constantly passing and repassing between Kent and Picardy, and between Wales and Ireland. Some of the messengers were honest fanatics; but others were mere mercenaries, and trafficked in the secrets of which they were the bearers.

Of these double traitors the most remarkable was William Fuller. This man has himself told us that, when he was very young, he fell in with a pamphlet which contained an account of the flagitious life and horrible death of Dangerfield. The boy's imagination was set on fire; he devoured the book; he almost got it by heart; and he was soon seized, and ever after haunted, by a strange presentiment that his fate would resemble that of the wretched adventurer whose history he had so eagerly read, [641] It might have been supposed that the prospect of dying in Newgate, with a back flayed and an eye knocked out, would not have seemed very attractive. But experience proves that there are some distempered minds for which notoriety, even when accompanied with pain and shame, has an irresistible fascination. Animated by this loathsome ambition, Fuller equalled, and perhaps surpassed, his model. He was bred a Roman Catholic, and was page to Lady Melfort, when Lady Melfort shone at Whitehall as one of the loveliest women in the train of Mary of Modena. After the Revolution, he followed his mistress to France, was repeatedly employed in delicate and perilous commissions, and was thought at Saint Germains to be a devoted servant of the House of Stuart. In truth, however, he had, in one of his journeys to London, sold himself to the new government, and had abjured the faith in which he had been brought up. The honour, if it is to be so called, of turning him from a worthless Papist into a worthless Protestant he ascribed, with characteristic impudence, to the lucid reasoning and blameless life of Tillotson.

In the spring of 1690, Mary of Modena wished to send to her correspondents in London some highly important despatches. As these despatches were too bulky to be concealed in the clothes of a single messenger, it was necessary to employ two confidential persons. Fuller was one. The other was a zealous young Jacobite called Crone. Before they set out, they received full instructions from the Queen herself. Not a scrap of paper was to be detected about them by an ordinary search: but their buttons contained letters written in invisible ink.

The pair proceeded to Calais. The governor of that town furnished them with a boat, which, under cover of the night, set them on the low marshy coast of Kent, near the lighthouse of Dungeness. They walked to a farmhouse, procured horses, and took different roads to London. Fuller hastened to the palace at Kensington, and delivered the documents with which he was charged into the King's hand. The first letter which William unrolled seemed to contain only florid compliments: but a pan of charcoal was lighted: a liquor well known to the diplomatists of that age was applied to the paper: an unsavoury steam filled the closet; and lines full of grave meaning began to appear.

The first thing to be done was to secure Crone. He had unfortunately had time to deliver his letters before he was caught: but a snare was laid for him into which he easily fell. In truth the sincere Jacobites were generally wretched plotters. There was among them an unusually large proportion of sots, braggarts, and babblers; and Crone was one of these. Had he been wise, he would have shunned places of public resort, kept strict guard over his lips, and stinted himself to one bottle at a meal. He was found by the messengers of the government at a tavern table in Gracechurch Street, swallowing bumpers to the health of King James, and ranting about the coming restoration, the French fleet, and the thousands of honest Englishmen who were awaiting the signal to rise in arms for their rightful Sovereign. He was carried to the Secretary's office at Whitehall. He at first seemed to be confident and at his ease: but when Fuller appeared among the bystanders at liberty, and in a fashionable garb, with a sword, the prisoner's courage fell; and he was scarcely able to articulate, [642]

The news that Fuller had turned king's evidence, that Crone had been arrested, and that important letters from Saint Germains were in the hands of William, flew fast through London, and spread dismay among all who were conscious of guilt, [643] It was true that the testimony of one witness, even if that witness had been more respectable than Fuller, was not legally sufficient to convict any person of high treason. But Fuller had so managed matters that several witnesses could be produced to corroborate his evidence against Crone; and, if Crone, under the strong terror of death, should imitate Fuller's example, the heads of all the chiefs of the conspiracy would be at the mercy of the government. The spirits of the Jacobites rose, however, when it was known that Crone, though repeatedly interrogated by those who had him in their power, and though assured that nothing but a frank confession could save his life, had resolutely continued silent. What effect a verdict of Guilty and the near prospect of the gallows might produce on him remained to be seen. His accomplices were by no means willing that his fortitude should be tried by so severe a test. They therefore employed numerous artifices, legal and illegal, to avert a conviction. A woman named Clifford, with whom he had lodged, and who was one of the most active and cunning agents of the Jacobite faction, was entrusted with the duty of keeping him steady to the cause, and of rendering to him services from which scrupulous or timid agents might have shrunk. When the dreaded day came, Fuller was too ill to appear in the witness box, and the trial was consequently postponed. He asserted that his malady was not natural, that a noxious drug had been administered to him in a dish of porridge, that his nails were discoloured, that his hair came off, and that able physicians pronounced him poisoned. But such stories, even when they rest on authority much better than that of Fuller, ought to be received with great distrust.

While Crone was awaiting his trial, another agent of the Court of Saint Germains, named Tempest, was seized on the road between Dover and London, and was found to be the bearer of numerous letters addressed to malecontents in England, [644]

Every day it became more plain that the State was surrounded by dangers: and yet it was absolutely necessary that, at this conjuncture, the able and resolute Chief of the State should quit his post.