Fletcher’s movements cannot be accurately traced for some time after he left Scotland. Argyll wrote to him, on several occasions, for the purpose of enlisting his services against the Government; but he did not answer the letters. At last, however, when he was at Brussels, he heard that the English Ministers had privately requested the Marquis de Grand to have him apprehended. This seems to have irritated him; for he went to London and joined the circle of Whigs who were then engaged in preparing to resist the succession of the Duke of York. As is well known, before the plot was matured Shaftesbury fled to Holland, where he died, and the management of this dangerous business was left in the hands of a council of six—Monmouth, Russell, Essex, Howard, Hampden, and Algernon Sidney.
According to Lord Buchan, Fletcher and Baillie of Jerviswoode were the only two Scotsmen who were admitted into the secrets of the six; but what part Fletcher took in the Whig Plot, which, it need scarcely be said, must be distinguished from the Rye-House Plot, of which Fletcher probably knew nothing, it is impossible to say. Baillie of Jerviswoode was offered his life, on condition that he would give evidence against his friends, and against Fletcher in particular; but he answered, in the often quoted words, ‘They who make such a proposal know neither me nor my country.’
In October 1683 he was in Paris, whither he had perhaps journeyed in company with Burnet, who had left England at the beginning of September. Viscount Preston who was then at Paris as Envoy-Extraordinary from the English Court, wrote to Halifax about Fletcher. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘is one Fletcher, lately come from Scotland. He is an ingenious but a very dangerous fanatic, and doubtless hath some commission, for I hear he is very busy and very virulent.’
Burnet returned to England in the beginning of the following year; and Fletcher seems then to have gone to Holland, where he saw he would be safer than anywhere else, for we next find him travelling about in that country and in Belgium, visiting the libraries of Leyden, and picking up volumes among the bookstalls of Haarlem. It was perhaps at this time that the curious incident recorded by Mrs. Calderwood of Polton, in the Coltness Collection, occurred. The story is almost incredible; but Mrs. Calderwood gives it in the most matter-of-fact way.
‘They tell,’ she says, ‘a story of old Fletcher of Salton and a skipper: Salton could not endure the smoak of toback, and as he was in a night-scoot, the skipper and he fell out about his forbidding him to smoak; Salton, finding he could not hinder him, went up and sat on the ridge of the boat, which bows like an arch. The skipper was so contentious that he followed him, and, on whatever side Salton sat, he put his pipe in the cheek next him, and whifed it in his face; Salton went down several times, and brought up stones in his pockets from the ballast, and slipt them into the skipper’s pocket that was next the water, and when he found he had loadened him as much as would sink him, he gives him a shove, so that over he hirsled. The boat went on, and Salton came down amongst the rest of the passengers, who probably were asleep, and fell asleep amongst the rest. In a little time bump came the scoot against the side, on which they all damned the skipper; but, behold, when they called, there was no skipper; which would breed no great amazement in a Dutch company.’
In the meantime the Government had not lost sight of Fletcher; for on the 21st of November 1684 he was cited at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, and at the pier and shore of Leith, to appear within sixty days, and answer to the charge of ‘Conversing with Argyll and other rebels abroad.’ With regard to this charge, Lord Fountainhall says that Fletcher’s intrigues with Monmouth, at the time of the Whig Plot, could not be criminal, as Monmouth had received his pardon in December 1683; but this was not the opinion of the Lord Advocate, for in the following January the Laird of Saltoun and a number of other ‘fugitive rebels,’ including Lord Loudoun, Lord Melville, and Sir James Dalrymple of Stairs, were charged with high treason, and declared outlaws.
Soon after the death of Charles II. Fletcher was at Brussels; and Monmouth, who was then living incognito at Amsterdam, sent his confidential servant, William Williams, with a letter to him. Williams afterwards, when he was called as a witness against Fletcher, said he did not know the contents of the letter; but it doubtless contained a request that Fletcher would come to Amsterdam.
Monmouth was now in despair. With the death of his father, his last chance of being received at the English Court was gone. He had fallen into the hands of conspirators who were urging him to invade England. His own opinions were all against this; and he wished to take the advice of Fletcher, which, whether sound or not, was certain to be disinterested. So Fletcher went to Amsterdam; and what happened shows that Monmouth had acted wisely in sending for him.
A long list could be compiled of the exiles who were now assembled at Amsterdam. Argyll, Lord Grey of Wark, and Ferguson the Plotter, were the most active and persistent of the conspirators who surrounded Monmouth; but a great part in these fateful deliberations was taken by Ayloffe and Rumbold, whose names are so well known in connection with the Rye-House Plot, by Wade, and by Captain Matthews. Dare, known as ‘Old Dare,’ to distinguish him from his son, must be specially remembered, as his name will presently occur in connection with the most painful event in Fletcher’s life. He had been a goldsmith of Taunton before he went into exile. He was a man of rough manners, but very popular in his native place. Having lived abroad for some time, he was now eager for an immediate descent on England, and persisted, more than any one else, in promising to Monmouth a general rising in the west country.
Another of the party was Anthony Buyse, who had served under the Elector of Brandenburgh, and whom readers of fiction may recollect as the ‘Brandenburgher’ with whom Micah Clarke has the bout of ‘handgrips,’ in Mr. Conan Doyle’s famous romance.