Meanwhile, Sir William Wyndham had secretly fled from London, as soon as he knew the peril he would incur by tarrying there. Sir William’s flight took him to Orchard Wyndham, his house in Somersetshire, where, surrounded by partisans, he deemed himself safe at least till he could devise means for putting a greater distance between himself and the Tower. One morning, in September, at five o’clock, before it was yet full daylight, two gentlemen arrived at the house, express from London, with letters for him, which were of the utmost importance. Sir William himself admitted them, in his night gear. They had scarcely crossed the threshold, when one of the visitors informed the Baronet that the two gentlemen he had admitted were Colonel Huske and a messenger, bearing a warrant to arrest and carry him up to town. ‘That being the case,’ said Sir William, ‘make no noise to awake Lady Wyndham, who is in a delicate condition of health.’ The Colonel had received orders that Lady Wyndham, being the Duke of Somerset’s daughter, was ‘on that account to be put in as little disorder as possible.’ SEARCH FOR PAPERS. Accordingly, Colonel and messenger quietly followed Sir William to his dressing-room, where the Colonel told him that he was ordered to search his papers, and seize all that might be suspicious. Wyndham produced his keys, readily; and he expressed such alacrity in recommending a thorough search of drawers, desks, chests, &c., that the wary Colonel, thought it might be as well to look elsewhere, first. His eye fell on the Baronets garments, as they lay carefully flung over a chair, and the astute agent, judging that the unlikeliest place was the likeliest for treasonable matter to be stowed away in, took up Sir William’s coat, with a ‘what may we have here?’ thrust his hands into one of the capacious pockets, and drew thence a bundle of papers. The emotion of Sir William was warrant of their importance. The Colonel read it all in his confusion and disorder, and urged the instant departure of his prisoner. ‘Only wait,’ said Sir William, ‘till seven o’clock, and I will have my carriage and six horses at the door. The coach will accommodate us all.’ Huske made no objection. Sir William proceeded to dress; and, finally, he remarked, ‘I will only go into my bed-room to take leave of my lady, and will shortly wait on you again.’ The Colonel allowed Sir William to enter the bed-room, and quietly waited till the leave-taking should be accomplished. As the farewell, however, seemed unusually long in coming to an end, the Colonel and messenger began to look at each other with some distrust. They had supposed that Wyndham was on his honour to return to them, but Sir William had supposed otherwise. Whether he stopped to kiss his sleeping wife or not, he never told, but he made no secret of what the Colonel discovered for himself, on entering the room, namely, that Wyndham had escaped by a private door, and perhaps his lady was not half so much asleep as she seemed to be. Her husband, at all events, lacked no aids to flight, the incidents leading to which were the common talk of the town, soon after the Colonel had come back to Secretary Stanhope. A reward of one thousand pounds was offered for the recapture of the Jacobite whom the Colonel had been expected to take, keep, and deliver up, in the ordinary discharge of his duty.
WYNDHAM’S ESCAPE.
On the morrow of Wyndham’s escape, Lord William Paulet and Paul Burrard were seated at a window in Winton market-place. From an inn-window opposite a parson was seen staring at them rather boldly, and both the gentlemen agreed that they had seen that face before, but could not well tell where. It was Wyndham in disguise; and in that clerical garb he contrived to get into Surrey, a serving-man riding with him. There, at an inn, his servant wrote, in Sir William’s name, to a clerical friend of the fugitive, asking for an asylum in his house. If the friend’s fears were too great to allow him to grant such perilous hospitality, he was urged to procure a resting place for the fugitive in the residence of the rector of the parish, who might receive an inmate in clerical costume without exciting suspicion. This letter chanced to reach the house of the person to whom it was addressed, during his absence. His wife had no scruples as to opening the missive; perhaps she suspected there was mischief in it. Having read its contents, and being anxious to serve and save her husband before all the Sir Williams in the world, she promptly sent the letter to the Earl of Aylesford, who as promptly submitted it to the Ministry. Meanwhile Wyndham felt that the delay in answering his request was the consequence of a discovery of his whereabouts. He at once set forth again, and the magistrates being too late to seize the master, laid hands upon the servant. There was found upon him a cypher ring containing a lock of hair, at sight of which a Whig magistrate exclaimed, ‘It’s the Pretender’s hair. Lord! I know the man and his principles. It cannot be nobody’s else!’ On examination, however, it was seen that the ring bore the cypher and carried the hair of Queen Anne. While the other magistrates were jeering their too confident colleague, Wyndham was quietly escaping from them.
DRAMATIC COURTESY.
Passing on his way to London, Sir William encountered Sir Denzil Onslow on horseback, escorted by two grooms. ‘Hereupon,’ says a pamphlet of the period, ‘the knight, as it is customary for those of the black robe (whose habit he had taken upon him) to do to Men of Figure, very courteously gave him the salute of his hat and the right hand of the road, which the said Mr. Onslow, being some time after apprised of, acknowledged to be true, with this circumstance, that he well remembered that he met a smock-faced, trim parson on such an occasion, but that his eyes were so taken up, and his attention wholly employed, with the beauties of the fine horse he rode upon, that he had no time to make a true discovery of his person at that juncture.’
UNCOURTEOUS INTERVIEW.
Wyndham, finding the pursuit grow too hot for him, rode to Sion House, Isleworth, one of the seats of his father-in-law, the Duke of Somerset. The two went up to the Duke’s town residence, Northumberland House, whence Wyndham’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Hertford, sent notice of the presence of such a guest to Secretary Stanhope. That official dispatched a messenger, by whom Wyndham was carried before the Council Board. It was said in London that he there denied all knowledge of a plot; but the Council, nevertheless, committed him to the Tower. The next day all London was astir with reporting the news that the Duke of Somerset, having been refused as bail for his son-in-law, had at once resigned his office of Master of the Horse.
Before Wyndham surrendered, the carriage of the Duke of Somerset, his father-in-law, was seen standing at the door of the famous lawyer, Sir Edward Northey. After the surrender, Government suspected that this interview was for the purpose of a consultation as to whether the proofs against Sir William could convict him of treason. Ministers resolved that the Duke should be deprived of his places, and Lord Townshend called upon him, with a sorrowful air, and a message from the king that his Majesty had no further occasion for the Duke’s services. ‘Pray, my Lord,’ said Somerset, ‘what is the reason of it?’ Lord Townshend answered, ‘I do not know!’ ‘Then,’ said the Duke, ‘by G—, my Lord, you lie!’ ‘You know that the king puts me out for no other cause, but for the lies which you, and such as you, have invented and told of me!’ Such were the amenities which passed between noblemen in those stirring Jacobite times. The duke asked leave to wait upon the king, but he was curtly told to wait till he was sent for.
A GENERAL STIR.
Still the plotters at large plotted on. The reiteration on the part of the Whigs that they were powerless and on the road to destruction, betrayed more fear than confidence. ‘If the (Tory) Party were not under a judicial infatuation,’ says one paper, ‘they might plainly see that Heaven has declared against them, by depriving them of their Chief Supporters, and discovering their treasonable plots, which, when set in a true light, will appear so treacherous and barbarous against their lawful sovereign, King George, and so bloody against their fellow subjects, as must make the memory of the Party execrable to latest Posterity.’ This seemed to have little influence on the Jacobites. The plot became so serious, there was so much uncertainty as to where it might break out, that officers were hurrying from London to assume command, in various directions, to Chester and to Dover, to Newcastle and to Portsmouth, to Berwick and to Plymouth, to Hull, to Carlisle, to York, to Edinburgh—east, west, north, south—there was a general hurrying from London to whatever point seemed likely to prove dangerous.