r difficulty. Ormond had many
friends, even among the most genuine supporters of the Hanoverian
succession. He was the idol of the High-Church party; at all events,
of the High-Church mob. Had he acted with anything like a steady
resolve he would, in all probability, have escaped even impeachment.
To some of the most serious charges against him, his refusal, for
instance, to attack the French while the secret negotiations for the
Treaty of Utrecht were going on, he could fairly have pleaded that he
had acted only as a soldier taking positive instructions and carrying
them out. His clear and obvious policy would have been to take the
quiet stand of a man conscious of innocence, and {111} therefore not
afraid of the scrutiny of any committee or the judgment of any tribunal.

But Ormond hesitated. Ormond was always hesitating. Many of his
influential supporters urged him to seek an audience of the King at
once, and to profess to George his unfailing and incorruptible loyalty.
Had he taken such a course it is not at all unlikely that the King
might have caused the measures against him to be abandoned. Ormond's
friends, indeed, were full of hope that they could, in any case, induce
the Ministry not to persevere in the proceedings against him. On the
other hand, he was urged to join in an insurrection in the West of
England, towards which, beyond doubt, he had already himself taken some
steps. The less cautious of his friends assured him that his
appearance in the West would be welcomed with open arms, and would
bring a vast number of adherents round him, and that a powerful blow
could be struck at once against the Hanoverian succession. Ormond,
however, took neither the one course nor the other. To do him justice,
he was far too honorable for the utter perfidy of the first course, and
it is doing him no injustice to say that he was too feeble for the
daring enterprise of the second. It is believed that Ormond had an
interview with Oxford before his flight, and that he urged Oxford to
attempt an escape in terms not unlike those with which William the
Silent, in Goethe's play, endeavors to persuade Egmont not to remain in
the power of Philip the Second. Then Ormond himself fled to France.
He lived there for thirty years after. He led a pleasant, easy,
harmless life, and was completely forgotten in England for years and
years before his death. More than twenty years after his flight he is
described by vivacious M