existed, against his uncle, and strike for the crown. Monmouth, however, for some time betrayed no desire for so hazardous an undertaking. On the death of Charles he had returned from the Hague to avoid giving cause of jealousy to James, and led the life of an English gentleman at Brussels. William of Orange strongly advised him to take a command in the war of Austria against the Turks, where he might win honour and a rank worthy of his birth; but Monmouth would not listen to it. He had left his wife, the great heiress of Buccleuch, to whom he had been married almost as a boy from royal policy, and had attached himself to lady Henrietta Wentworth, baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. The attachment, though illicit, appeared to be mutual and ardent. Monmouth confessed that lady Henrietta, who was beautiful, amiable, and accomplished, had weaned him from a vicious life, and had their connection been lawful, nothing could have been more fortunate for Monmouth. In her society he seemed to have grown indifferent to ambition and the life of courts. But he was beset by both Grey and Ferguson, and, unfortunately for him, they won over lady Wentworth to their views. She encouraged Monmouth, and offered him her income and her jewels to furnish him with immediate funds. With such an advocate. Grey and Ford at length succeeded. Grey was a man of blemished character. He had seduced and run off with his wife's sister, a daughter of the earl of Berkeley, and was a poor and desperate adventurer, notoriously cowardly on the field of battle. Ferguson was a fiery demagogue and zealot of insurrection. He had been a preacher and school-master amongst the dissenters, then a clergyman of the church, and finally had become a most untiring intriguer, and was deep in the Rye House plot. Under all this fire of rebellion, however, there was more than a suspected fold smoke of espionage. He was shrewdly believed, though not by his dupes, to be in the pay of government, and employed to betray and urge on its enemies to ruin.
Monmouth having consented to take the lead in an invasion, though with much reluctance and many misgivings, a communication was opened with Argyll and the Scottish malcontents. We have seen that Argyll, after his father bad been inveigled from his mountains and beheaded, had himself nearly suffered the same fate from James when in Scotland. He had been imprisoned and condemned to death on the most arbitrary grounds, and had only managed to escape in disguise. He had purchased an estate at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, where the great MacCullum More, as he was called by the Highlanders, lived in great seclusion. He was now drawn from it once more to revisit his native country at the head of an invading force. But the views of the refugees were so different, and their means so small, that it was some time before they could agree upon a common plan of action. It was at length arranged that a descent should be made simultaneously on Scotland and England—the Scotch expedition headed by Argyll, that on England by Monmouth. Bat to maintain a correspondence and a sort of unison, two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold the maltster, were to accompany the Scots, and two Scotchmen, Fletcher of Saltoun and Ferguson, the English force. Monmouth was sworn not to claim any rank or reward on the success of the enterprise, except such as should be awarded him by a free parliament; and Argyll was compelled, although he had the nominal command of the army, to submit to hold it only as one of a committee of twelve, of whom Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth was to be president.
In fact, Argyll at the outset displayed a fetal want of knowledge of human nature or firmness of resolution, in consenting to accept a command on so impossible a basis. To expect success as a military leader when hampered with the conflicting views of a dozen men of ultra views in religion and politics, and of strong and domineering wills, was the height of folly. Hume, who took the lead in the committee, was a man of enormous conceit, a great talker, and a very dilatory actor. Next to him was Sir John Cochrane, the second son of lord Dundonald, who was almost equally self-willed and jealous of the power of Argyll. With their republican notions, they endeavoured to impose such restrictions on the power of the earl, as were certain to insure the ruin of the attempt, in which everything must depend on the independent action of a single mind.
We have already noticed the character of Ferguson, one of the twain selected to accompany Monmouth. Fletcher of Saltoun, the other, was a far different man—a man of high talent, fine taste, and finished education. At the head of a popular senate he would have shone as an orator and statesman; but he had those qualities of lofty pride and headstrong will which made him by no means a desirable officer in an army of adventurers, although his military skill was undoubted. 'What was worse, from the very first he foreboded no good result from the expedition, and only accompanied it because he would not seem to desert his more sanguine countrymen; but when Wildman and Danvers sent from London very flaming accounts of the ripeness of England for revolt, and said that just two hundred years before the earl of Richmond landed in England with a mere handful of men, and wrested the crown from Richard, Fletcher coolly replied that there was all the difference betwixt the fifteenth century and the seventeenth.
These men, Wildman and Danvers, represented the country as so prepared to receive Monmouth, that he had only to show his standard for whole counties to flock to it. They promised also six thousand pounds in aid of the preparations. But the fact was, that little or no money came, and James and his ministers were duly informed of the measures of the insurgents, and were at once using every means with the Dutch government to prevent the sailing of the armaments, and taking measures for the defence of the Scotch and English coasts. We may first follow the fortunes of Argyll and his associates, who sailed first. He put out from the coast of Holland on the 2nd of May, and after a prosperous voyage, sighted Kirkwall, in Orkney, on the 6th. There he very unwisely anchored, and suffered his two followers to go on shore to collect intelligence. The object of his armament then became known, and was sure to reach the English government in a little time. The bishop of Orkney boldly ordered the two insurgents to be secured, and refused to give them up. After three days lost in endeavouring to obtain their release, they seized some gentlemen living on the coast, and offered them in exchange. The bishop paid no regard to their pro-
