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While so great a faction adhered to the crown, it is apparent that resistance, however justifiable, could never be prudent; and all wise men saw no expedient but peaceably to submit to the present grievances. There was, however, a party of malecontents, so turbulent in their disposition, that, even before this last iniquity, which laid the whole constitution at the mercy of the king, they had meditated plans of resistance; at a time when it could be as little justifiable as prudent. In the spring of 1681,[*] a little before the Oxford parliament, the king was seized with a fit of sickness at Windsor, which gave great alarm to the public.

* Lord Grey’s Secret History of the Rye-house Plot. This is
the most full and authentic account of all these
transactions; but is in the main confirmed by Bishop Sprat,
and even Burnet, as well as by the trials and dying
confessions of the conspirators; so that nothing can be more
unaccountable than that any one should pretend that this
conspiracy was an imposture, like the Popish plot.
Monmouth’s declaration, published in the next reign,
confesses a consult for extraordinary remedies.

The duke of Monmouth, Lord Russel, Lord Grey, instigated by the restless Shaftesbury, had agreed, in case the king’s sickness should prove mortal, to rise in arms, and to oppose the succession of the duke. Charles recovered; but these dangerous projects were not laid aside. The same conspirators, together with Essex and Salisbury were determined to continue the Oxford parliament, after the king, as was daily expected, should dissolve it; and they engaged some leaders among the commons in the same desperate measure. They went so far as to detain several lords in the house, under pretence of signing a protest against rejecting Fitzharris’s impeachment; but hearing that the commons had broken up in great consternation, they were likewise obliged at last to separate. Shaftesbury’s imprisonment and trial put an end for some time to these machinations; and it was not till the new sheriffs were imposed on the city that they were revived. The leaders of the country party began then to apprehend themselves in imminent danger; and they were well pleased to find that the citizens were struck with the same terror, and were thence inclined to undertake the most perilous enterprises. Besides the city, the gentry and nobility in several counties of England were solicited to rise in arms. Monmouth engaged the earl of Macclesfield, Lord Brandon, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and other gentlemen in Cheshire; Lord Russel fixed a correspondence with Sir William Courtney, Sir Francis Rowles, Sir Francis Drake, who promised to raise the west; and Trenchard in particular, who had interest in the disaffected town of Taunton, assured him of considerable assistance from that neighborhood. Shaftesbury and his emissary Ferguson, an Independent clergyman and a restless plotter, managed the correspondence in the city, upon which the confederates chiefly relied. The whole train was ready to take fire; but was prevented by the caution of Lord Russel, who induced Monmouth to delay the enterprise. Shaftesbury, in the mean time, was so much affected with the sense of his danger, that he had left his house, and secretly lurked in the city; meditating all those desperate schemes which disappointed revenge and ambition could inspire. He exclaimed loudly against delay, and represented to his confederates, that having gone so far, and intrusted the secret into so many hands, there was no safety for them but in a bold and desperate prosecution of their purpose. The projects were therefore renewed: meetings of the conspirators were appointed in different houses, particularly in Shephard’s, an eminent wine-merchant in the city: the plan of an insurrection was laid in London, Cheshire, Devonshire, and Bristol: the several places of rendezvous in the city were concerted; and all the operations fixed: the state of the guards was even viewed by Monmouth and Armstrong, and an attack on them pronounced practicable: a declaration to justify the enterprise to the public was read and agreed to: and every circumstance seemed now to render an insurrection unavoidable; when a new delay was procured by Trenchard, who declared that the rising in the west could not for some weeks be in sufficient forwardness.

Shaftesbury was enraged at these perpetual cautions and delays in an enterprise which, he thought, nothing but courage and celerity could render effectual: he threatened to commence the insurrection with his friends in the city alone; and he boasted, that he had ten thousand brisk boys, as he called them, who, on a motion of his finger, were ready to fly to arms. Monmouth*[**missing comma] Russel, and the other conspirators, were during some time in apprehensions lest despair should push him into some dangerous measure; when they heard that, after a long combat between fear and rage, he had at last abandoned all hopes of success, and had retired into Holland. He lived in a private manner at Amsterdam; and for greater security desired to be admitted into the magistracy of that city: but his former violent counsels against the Dutch commonwealth were remembered; and all applications from him were rejected. He died soon after, and his end gave neither sorrow to his friends nor joy to his enemies. His furious temper, notwithstanding his capacity, had done great injury to the cause in which he was engaged. The violences and iniquities which he suggested and encouraged, were greater than even faction itself could endure; and men could not forbear sometimes recollecting, that the same person who had become so zealous a patriot, was once a most prostitute courtier. It is remarkable, that this man, whose principles and conduct were in all other respects so exceptionable, proved an excellent chancellor; and that all his decrees, while he possessed that high office, were equally remarkable for justness and for integrity: so difficult is it to find in history a character either wholly bad or perfectly good; though the prejudices of party make writers run easily into the extremes both of panegyric and of satire.

After Shaftesbury’s departure, the conspirators found some difficulty in renewing the correspondence with the city malecontents, who had been accustomed to depend solely on that nobleman. Their common hopes, however, as well as common fears, made them at last have recourse to each other; and a regular project of an insurrection was again formed. A council of six was erected, consisting of Monmouth, Russel, Essex, Howard, Algernon Sidney, and John Hambden, grandson of the great parliamentary leader. These men entered into an agreement with Argyle and the Scottish malecontents; who engaged, that, upon the payment of ten thousand pounds for the purchase of arms in Holland, they would bring the Covenanters into the field. Insurrections likewise were anew projected in Cheshire and the west, as well as in the city; and some meetings of the leaders were held, in order to reduce these projects into form. The conspirators differed extremely in their views. Sidney was passionate for a commonwealth. Essex had embraced the same project. But Monmouth had entertained hopes of acquiring the crown for himself. Russel, as well as Hambden, was much attached to the ancient constitution, and intended only the exclusion of the duke and the redress of grievances. Lord Howard was a man of no principle, and was ready to embrace any party which his immediate interest should recommend to him. But notwithstanding this difference of characters and of views, their common hatred of the duke and the present administration united them in one party; and the dangerous experiment of an insurrection was fully resolved on.

While these schemes were concerting among the leaders, there was an inferior order of conspirators, who held frequent meetings, and, together with the insurrection, carried on projects quite unknown to Monmouth and the cabal of six*[**missing period] Among these men were Colonel Rumsey, an old republican officer, who had distinguished himself in Portugal, and had been recommended to the king by Mareschal Schomberg; Lieutenant-Colonel Walcot, likewise a republican officer; Goodenough, under-sheriff of London, a zealous and noted party-man; West, Tyley, Norton, Ayloffe, lawyers; Ferguson, Rouse, Hone, Keiling, Holloway, Bourne, Lee, Rumbald. Most of these last were merchants or tradesmen; and the only persons of this confederacy who had access to the leaders of the party, were Rumsey and Ferguson. When these men met together, they indulged themselves in the most desperate and most criminal discourse; they frequently mentioned the assassination of the king and the duke, to which they had given the familiar appellation of lopping: they even went so far as to have thought of a scheme for that purpose. Rumbald, who was a maltster, possessed a farm, called the Ryehouse, which lay on the road to Newmarket, whither the king commonly went once a year, for the diversion of the races. A plan of this farm had been laid before some of the conspirators by Rumbald, who showed them how easy it would be, by overturning a cart, to stop at that place the king’s coach; while they might fire upon him from the hedges, and be enabled afterwards, through by-lanes and across the fields, to make their escape. But though the plausibility of this scheme gave great pleasure to the conspirators, no concerted design was as yet laid, nor any men, horses, or arms provided: the whole was little more than loose discourse, the overflowings of their zeal and rancor. The house in which the king lived at Newmarket, took fire accidentally; and he was obliged to leave that place eight days sooner than he intended. To this circumstance his safety was afterwards ascribed, when the conspiracy was detected; and the court party could not sufficiently admire the wise dispensations of Providence. It is, indeed, certain, that as the king had thus unexpectedly left Newmarket, he was worse attended than usual; and Rumbald informed his confederates with regret what a fine opportunity was thus unfortunately lost.