With such a heady currance."
There had been no similar émeute, as I was told by a civic wit, since the days of "Vat Tyler." Now let me remind you of the Barclay and Perkins and the other Turnham Green men's plot, who conspired to assault and assassinate King William III. Mind, the coincidence is only in name. The historic parallel is rather of kind than event, but it is not the less remarkable when we consider the excitement twice connected with these names. The character of James II. may be described as the villainy of weakness. It possessed nothing of elevation, breadth, or strength. It was this weak obliquity which made him deceive his people, and led them to subvert the laws, supplant the church, and to become a tyrant in the name of religious liberty. His means to recover the throne were as mean as the manner of its desertion was despicable. He tried cajolery, it failed; the bravery of his Irish soldiers, it was unavailing. He next relied on the corruption of Russell, the avarice of Marlborough; but as these men were to be bought as well as sold, he put his trust finally in any villain who was willing to be hired for assassination. In 1692 M. de Grandval, a captain of dragoons, was shot in the allied camp, who confessed that King James at St. Germain, in the presence of the queen, had engaged him to shoot King William. Four years later James had contrived another plot. At the head of this were Sir George Barclay and Sir William Perkins, and under their guidance twenty men were engaged to assist in the assassination of King William. The plan was as follows. It was the custom of the king to hunt near the house of Mr. Latten, in the neighbourhood of Brentford, and they designed to surprise the king on his return at a hollow part of the road between Brentford and Turnham Green, one division of them being placed behind some bushes and brushwood at the western end of the Green. Some of your correspondents may perhaps fix the spot; but as the Green extended then far beyond what it now does, I suspect it was about the road leading to Gunnesbury; the road itself I recollect as a boy seeing much elevated and improved. The design failed, two of the gang betrayed the rest,—Barclay escaped, but Perkins and some others were hung. Jeremy Collier attended them on the scaffold, and publicly gave them absolution in the name of Christ, and by imposition of hands, for all their sins. I need not describe to you the excitement caused by this plot of Barclay and Perkins: the event connected with their names, as at our later period—
"Was a theme of all conversation;
Had it been a pillar of church and state,
Or a prop to support the whole dead weight,
It could not have furnished more debate
For the heads and tails of the nation."
James closed the drama becomingly; he published a defence of his conduct in a paper, the style of which has been well described as the "euphemism of assassination." The road between Turnham Green and Kew was long after associated with the names of "Barclay and Perkins."
S.H.