who Ferguson was, and how he earned his nickname of the Plotter. He was a native of Aberdeenshire, born probably about 1630. After studying at the University of Aberdeen, he entered the Church, and at the time of the Restoration held the living of Godmersham in Kent, from which he was ejected by the Act of Uniformity. He then seems to have been master of a Dissenting school at Islington, a preacher at Moorfields, and assistant to the Nonconformist theologian, Dr. John Owen. But he soon began to earn his name. Within less than six months after his ejection from his living, he was lodged in the Gatehouse prison for treasonable practices, which however do not seem at that time to have then gone beyond dangerous or, to use his own phrase, "lavish" talking. After nearly four months' imprisonment he was released on bail, and for the next sixteen years seems to have contented himself with composing theological treatises, of which the curious will find a sufficient account in this volume. But in 1679 he definitely abandoned theology for politics; and from that year till 1682 he had a hand in the ablest and most seditious of the pamphlets which gathered round the fabled contents of the notorious Black Box, and by means of which Shaftesbury and his party strove to

set up

the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, as heir apparent to the Crown, against the Popish Duke of York. In 1680 the genius of Halifax moved the House of Lords to reject the Exclusion Bill by a large majority; and the hasty dissolution of the new parliament which met at Oxford in the following spring stopped the Bill again and for ever. Then the triumph of the Court party received a check. It was determined to try Shaftesbury for high treason, but it was necessary to try him in London, and a grand jury, carefully packed by the Whig sheriffs, threw out the bill. Through all this time Ferguson's busy intriguing spirit

knew no rest.

"He was the keeper of a secret purse from which agents too vile to be acknowledged

received hire, and the director of a secret press from which pamphlets, bearing no name, were daily issued. He boasted that he had contrived to scatter lampoons about the terrace of Windsor, and even to lay them under the royal pillow. In this way of life he was put to many shifts, was forced to assume many names, and at one time had four different lodgings in four different corners of London.'

These are Macaulay's words, and though Mr. Ferguson has included them in a passage which he instances as a specimen of moral caricature, only to be paralleled by the afore-quoted personal caricature, they receive full corroboration in his own text.

But now affairs began to take a darker complexion. From seditious talking and writing the disaffected Whigs turned to insurrection and murder. What is known in history as the Rye House Plot consisted really of two separate schemes, one for a general rising in England and Scotland, and another, growing out of the first, for the assassination of the King and the Duke of York. How many of the promoters of the first scheme approved of the latter never has been, and probably never will be, ascertained. That they were most of them aware of it is almost certain, and that many of them disapproved of it may well be believed. Men like Russell and Sidney, Argyll and Baillie of Jerviswood, were no assassins. Monmouth was not a scrupulous man, and had little affection for his uncle, but he would never have consented to the murder of his father. Shaftesbury's complicity must remain more doubtful. But it is with Ferguson that we are directly concerned. That he was at a very early stage in the confidence of the more desperate plotters his biographer admits; but he claims to prove that his hero used his knowledge to thwart the scheme, and that its miscarriage was solely due to his courage and ingenuity. He has undoubtedly shown cause for reconsidering the unanimous verdict which has for more than two centuries named Ferguson as the prime mover and guider of these murderous designs; but that he has conclusively established his case is not so certain.

Together with the letters to his wife there was discovered in the same office a manuscript in Ferguson's handwriting, endorsed by him, "Concerning the Rye House business"; and the whole question turns upon the amount of credence that, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, can be given to the writer's vindication of his own character. Mr. Ferguson of course claims for it implicit credence, but not all the arguments by which he supports his claim move us equally. The pious and kindly language of those letters to the wife, on which he so triumphantly relies, seem to us of little real value. The history of human nature has long ago proved that the domestic affections can co-exist with the blackest crimes. That one of them at any rate tends to contradict Burnet's statement that Ferguson was a common swindler we cordially admit; but, because he, when in hiding for his life on a charge of treason, sent his wife a recipe for her gout and expressed his sorrow at being separated from her and her children, to maintain that he was incapable of countenancing assassination to further his political designs, seems to us, we frankly own, absurd. Ferguson was a fanatic, and a religious fanatic, the most dangerous of the breed: "half maniac and half knave," Macaulay calls him, and his biographer, though he is clearly unaware of it, practically leads his readers to the conclusion that these stern epithets were not undeserved. The history of those times shows very plainly what religious fanatics were capable of. The assassins of Sharp professed to believe their deed directly inspired and sanctioned by God, and rode to their bloody work with His name upon their lips. Are we compelled to believe that a man, who manifestly had in his own composition much of the qualities which make such men as Burley and Hamilton, was incapable of assenting to the murder of two enemies whom he called tyrants and heretics, because he could pray God to bless his wife?

The evidence outside Ferguson's own testimony is pretty equally divided. Rumsey and West, two of the conspirators who turned King's evidence, laid the chief blame on him. Another of them, Bourne, with whom Ferguson had often lodged in London and who seems to have been much in his confidence, said that he had learned from him that the design had been prevented-which, however, is not, as his biographer seems to think, the same thing as saying that Ferguson had prevented it. Moreover, this witness owned on another occasion to a certain speech of Ferguson, directly incompatible with any hesitation to take life. Holloway, who was executed, acquitted Ferguson, and declared West and Rumsey to be the guilty parties. It is more pleasant to believe that the man who suffers for his fault is speaking truth, than to believe the man who saves his own life by betraying his comrades: on the other hand must be remembered the natural inclination of a man, brought to death by treachery, to give his last breath to the confusion of the traitor. Still, it may be fairly argued that so far the evidence makes more for Ferguson than against him. On the other side is Monmouth, who, on Sprat's authority, told the King that Ferguson "was always for cutting of throats, saying it was the most compendious way." Lord Howard of Escrick spoke also to certain dark hints; and Carstares, not the ally of the villain Oates, but the brave clergyman who had kept his faith. under torture, and who was loved and trusted by William as much as any man after Bentinck, owned that Ferguson had declared it would be necessary to "cut off a few." The evidence of neither Monmouth nor Howard goes for much both were men who in moments of extreme peril would hesitate at nothing to save themselves. But Carstares was an honest as well as a brave man, and his testimony it seems impossible to explain away by interpreting the words spoken to him. as referring only to the insurrection.

This, we think, fairly represents the

sum of the evidence for and against the Plotter, and it will thus be seen that the verdict must go by the measure of belief due to his own story. Briefly told that story is to this effect. As soon as the scheme for the assassination of the two brothers was revealed to him, he carried the news at once to Monmouth, who swore he would not have it, and charged him to stop it at his peril. This he did; but, as the Duke had strictly enjoined that his knowledge of the plot should never be revealed, his lips were closed while Monmouth lived. This is all clear and reasonable enough. Monmouth, when confessing to his father his share in the plan of the insurrection, had denied all knowledge of the intended murder; and Ferguson therefore could not exculpate himself without giving his best patron the lie. His biographer, however, rather discounts his own belief in this story by the suggestion that his hero's mysterious and inexplicable escape might be due to the Government's consent to favour a man who, as they had learned from Monmouth, had managed at great personal risk to save the King's life. But not to press this point, what is not clear or reasonable is Ferguson's silence after Monmouth's death had unsealed his lips. It seems probable that his manuscript was seized, with the writer's other papers, in 1696, after the discovery of the Assassination Plot. During ten years therefore Ferguson had ample opportunity for clearing himself from an odious charge which he knew to be universally believed against him. Yet he made no sign.

On reviewing the whole case we cannot think that Mr. Ferguson has made good his claim. We are willing to own that he has shown cause for an appeal. We are even willing to allow that there may be grounds for granting him a verdict of Not Proven. But to allow him to have established his plea of Not Guilty is, we must frankly say, in the face of even his own witnesses, impossible.

We can only touch on two out of the many other points on which we

find ourselves at issue with Mr. Ferguson; and on them we must be brief. Macaulay has branded the declaration which was read at the market cross of Lyme on the fourth of June, 1685, as a libel of the lowest class both in sentiment and language. This declaration was confessedly the work of Ferguson, and his biographer has therefore to defend it. "It was," he says, "viewed very differently by those to whom it was addressed." No doubt; and the speeches made by certain lawless ruffians both in England and Ireland to-day are no doubt viewed very differently by those to whom they are addressed, without changing the views of all decent members of the community, Irish and English alike, who may be at the pains to read them. contained," says Macaulay,

"It

"undoubtedly many just charges against the Government. But these charges were set forth in the prolix and inflated style of a bad pamphlet; and the paper contained other charges, of which the whole disgrace falls on those who made them. The Duke of York, it was positively affirmed, had burned down London, had strangled Godfrey, had cut the throat of Essex, and had poisoned the late King."

These charges, says Mr. Ferguson, were "but the ordinary missiles of factious politics." The "missiles of factious politics" are no doubt, as Macaulay says, and as certain persons who call themselves statesmen are now proving to their unalloyed satisfaction, extremely useful in "stimulating the passions of the vulgar." But they are not, we submit, well placed in the mouth of one professing to call his lawful subjects to aid him in recovering his birthright from a usurper, and in restoring the religion and liberty of his kingdom. As for the manner of this declaration, Mr. Ferguson considers it far superior as a specimen of literary style to the declaration drawn up by James Stewart for Argyll. To decide the literary claims of two such masterpieces would tax the skill of the critic who argued on the superiority of his own fooling over that of his friend, Sir Toby Belch. But as Mr. Ferguson,

with his rare, but surely somewhat puzzling candour, has printed large extracts from the English declaration, the curious have ample opportunity for judging its quality. This, however, is more to the purpose: his biographer has based his apology on the ground that Ferguson, even when most mistaken and when most misled by religious and political zeal, was at bottom a man of genuine and sincere conviction, was, in short, a good and honest man. Is it, we would ask, the part of a good and honest man, a professing minister of the Christian religion, to bring against another for any purpose charges of the gravest and most odious nature which he knows to be absolutely false ?

The last of Mr. Ferguson's claims that we propose to traverse is perhaps the most remarkable of all. It does not involve matters of such grave moment as the others, but it is even more singular. When William had brought his great enterprise to a settled conclusion, he did not overlook even the meanest of those who had been associated with it. Wildman was made Postmaster-General: Ferguson was rewarded with a sinecure in the Excise worth five hundred pounds a year. He had scarcely been settled in his new office when he

turned to his old game. He could no longer conspire against the Stuarts: he therefore turned Jacobite and conspired for them. He was in the Scotch plot of Sir James Montgomery: he was in the plot which Russell crushed in the bay of La Hogue: he was in the Lancashire plot: he was in the plot of Charnock and Fenwick, which, like the old affair of the Rye House, included an assassination scheme fomented by the notorious "Scum " Goodman. For his share in this last business he was locked up in Newgate for nearly a year. He was next heard of in connection with those mysterious intrigues of Lovat, popularly known as the Scots, or Queensberry, Plot. This gave him an opportunity of at once advertising his new principles and paying off an old grudge.

He

66

But

congratulated the country on being once more ruled by one of the serene family of Stuarts"; and he denounced Carstares, who had been lately elected Principal of the University of Edinburgh, as one who had been deepest in the designs of the Rye House conspirators. Nevertheless, despite his declarations, and his assurance under examination, he was again lodged in Newgate. His prosecution, however, came to nothing, and after some months' imprisonment he was set free. From this time he seems to have plotted no more. his pen was as busy as ever; and to this period belongs the most remarkable of all his writings, a history of the Revolution, designed to show that it was in reality a Popish device, and William no more than the unscrupulous agent of the Jesuits. At length the end came, as the end of such a life was fated to come, in poverty and sadness. In 1710 he lost his faithful and affectionate wife: the children of his dead brother were taken from him by their guardian and in 1714 his dark and wayward spirit knew rest at last.

:

His biographer has been at great pains to show that this sudden and startling change from the extreme of Whiggery to the extreme of Jacobitism was, like all the actions of his life, based on sincere convictions. The results of the Revolution were not, we are told, such as he had hoped for: the toleration extended by William to the Roman Catholics was naturally resented by one whose whole life had been a struggle against the tyranny of the Papists. Surely this is a strange way of accounting for this champion of the Protestant faith throwing himself into the arms of its bitterest enemy. But from arguments Mr. Ferguson soon passes into excuses.

"Is it so improbable that an honest but hot tempered man, finding himself disappointed in those from whom he had expected something very different from what he saw, and also a little piqued at glaring neglect of his own past exertions, learning that much he had believed was groundless, should reconsider the past, reverse the engine, and retrace his

career? Sir Robert Peel was converted to Free Trade after the triumph of Protection in 1841; his most prominent disciple executed a sharper political curve in the closing months

of 1885.'

Few who care to acquaint themselves with the nature of Ferguson's exertions, as shown, for example, in the Presbyterian meeting-house at Exeter, and to consider how far they were likely to have furthered the success of the Revolution, will probably consider them to have been glaringly neglected by a sinecure of five hundred pounds a year. Nor is it a happier use of words to describe him as retracing his career. He did no such thing. He had hitherto been a Presbyterian and Nonconformist of the straitest sect. He was now to become a High Churchman; and indeed, when he did not hesitate to declare that, if James were restored, he would put a rope round his neck and ask pardon of him on his knees, the current report that he had turned Papist was, to say the least, not unreasonable. But the last excuse is the strangest of all, and most strange indeed to come from a member of Mr. Ferguson's profession. In what court of law has it been ever held good that the offence of one man is condoned by the same offence having been previously committed by another? Nor is the political parallel more happily drawn. Mr. Gladstone's soul may lack the starlike properties of Milton's, but it certainly dwells apart: he is not made as others are. Those changes of political front which so sorely puzzle feebler heads, to him are evolutions as natural and inevitable as those by which men grew out of monkeys. He reposes secure in the belief of his own reasonableness. For our part we can only say, with Falstaff's tailor, that we like not the security.

But, urges Mr. Ferguson, if the Plotter's last state be inexplicable, at least it was the state of an honest man : we must not doubt the sincerity of a man who, when he changes, changes to the losing side. Again we cannot accept the excuse. Not for many

If

years after William was settled on the throne, not for many years after he was in his grave, was it clear to the men of those days that the cause of the Stuarts was a lost cause. any faith is to be put in the Plotter's own language it was certainly not clear to him, when he told James that if he landed in England with fifteen thousand men he would be joined by more than he brought, and, with God's assistance, would march peaceably to Whitehall; or again, when he offered to give himself up for punishment in France, if that enterprise should miscarry whose utter and irretrievable failure James himself saw accomplished from the ramparts of Saint Vaast. And finally we must beg to remind Mr. Ferguson that this honest man did not scruple to take the money of the king he was betraying till his treachery became too gross for that king's forbearance. "He was free," says his biographer triumphantly, "from the inexpiable baseness of Marlborough and Sunderland." It strikes us that to live on the bounty of the man you are betraying bears a very strong affinity indeed to the inexpiable baseness which has been laid to the charge of Marlborough.

But though we can accept neither Mr. Ferguson's arguments nor his excuses, we cordially agree with him that there is nothing improbable in his hero's conduct. Nor do we find anything in it inexplicable. It seems to us, on the contrary, of a piece with all the actions of his life, and with his own explanation of those actions. And it is Mr. Ferguson himself who has made this clear to us. He has told us how, when the Rye House bubble was blown, and the conspirators were met for the last time, the confident Plotter laughed at their fears. "Gentlemen," he said, "you are strangers to this kind of exercise; I have been used to fly, I will never leave off as long as I live." In these words lies the simple solution of the whole problem. In one of the most amusing of his Idlers Johnson has illustrated a class of