No exception, I think, can be fairly taken at the methods by which I pursued it. However, this popularity it was, as you rightly divine, which drew upon me all the mischiefs that followed. For the application of all men, disposed to the king’s service, was now made to me. I had an opportunity, by this means, of knowing the characters and views of particular persons, and of getting an insight into the true state of the king’s affairs. And these advantages, in the end, drove me on the project, which, on the discovery, came to be called my Plot: an event, which, with all its particulars, you understand too well to need any information from me about it.
DR. MORE.
The story, as it was noised abroad, I am no stranger to: but this being one of those occasions, as they say, in which both your policy and virtue were put to the sharpest trial, it would be much to the purpose you have in view by this recital, to favour me with your own account of it.
MR. WALLER.
To lead you through all particulars, would not suit with the brevity you require of me. But something I will say to obviate the misconceptions you may possibly have entertained of this business[26]. For the plot itself, the utmost of my design was only to form such a combination among the honest and well-affected of all sorts, as might have weight enough to incline the houses to a peace, and prevent the miseries that were too certainly to be apprehended from a civil war. It was never in my thoughts to surprize the parliament or city by force, or engage the army in the support and execution of my purpose. But my design in this affair, though the fury of my enemies, and the fatal jealousy of the time, would not suffer it to be rightly understood, is not that which my friends resented, and which most men were disposed to blame in me. It was my behaviour afterwards, and the obliquity of some means which I found expedient to my own safety, that exposed me to so rude a storm of censure. It continues, I know, to beat upon me even at this distance. But the injustice hath arisen from the force of vulgar prejudices, and from the want of entering into those enlarged principles, on which it was necessary for me to proceed in that juncture.
DR. MORE.
Yet the ill success of this plot itself might have shewn you, what the design of acting on these enlarged principles was likely to come to. It was an unlucky experiment, this, you had made in the new arts of living; and should have been a warning to you, not to proceed in a path which, at the very entrance of it, had involved you in such difficulties.
MR. WALLER.
No, it was not the new path, you object to me, but the good old road of Sincerity, which misled me into those brambles. I, in the simplicity of my heart, thought it my duty to adhere to the injured king’s cause, and believed my continuance in parliament the fairest, as well as the likeliest method, that could be taken to support it. Had I temporized so far as either to desert my prince, and strike in with the parliament, or, on the other hand, had left the house and gone with the seceders to Oxford, either way I had been secure. But resolving, as I did, to hold my principles, and follow my judgment, I fell into those unhappy circumstances, from which all the dexterity I afterwards assumed was little enough to deliver me.