en blow. He was to seize
Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and other towns, and set the Stuart flag
flying all over that part of England. When he appeared in France, a
mere solitary fugitive, all men of sense saw that the game was up.
Bolingbroke at once sent through safe hands a clear statement of the
condition of things, to be laid before Lord Mar. Bolingbroke's object
was to restrain Mar from any movement in the altered state of affairs.
The letter, however, came too late. Mar had already made his movement
towards the Highlands: there was no stopping the enterprise then; the
rebellion had taken fire. James was determined more than ever to go.
His arguments were the arguments of mere desperation. "I cannot but
{120} see," he wrote to Bolingbroke, "that affairs grow daily worse and
worse by delays, and that, as the business is now more difficult than
it was six months ago, so these difficulties will, in all human
appearance, rather increase than diminish. Violent diseases must have
violent remedies, and to use none has, in some cases, the same effect
as to use bad ones." Indeed, it was impossible that the Chevalier
himself or the Duke of Ormond could hold back. Both had personal
courage quite enough for such an attempt. On the 28th of October James
Stuart, after many delays, set out in disguise, and travelled westward
to St. Malo. Ormond sailed from the coast of Normandy to that of
Devonshire, but found there no sign of any arrangement for a rising.
His plans had long been known to the English Government, and measures
had been taken to frustrate them. In that little Jacobite Parliament
sitting in Paris, which Bolingbroke spoke of with such contempt, and
from which, as he puts it, "no sex was excluded," there was hardly any
secret made of the projects they were carrying on. Before the sudden
appearance of Ormond in Paris they had counted, with the utmost
confidence, on a full success, and were already talking of the
Restoration as if it were an accomplished fact. Every word they
uttered which it was of the least importance for the British Government
to hear was instantly made known to Lord Stair, the new English
Ambassador--a resolute and capable man, a brilliant soldier, an astute
and bold diplomatist, equal to any craft, ready for any emergency,
charming to all, dear to his friends, very formidable to his enemies.
Ormond found that, as he had let the favorable moment slip when he fled
from England to France, the