on that was to overthrow the Protector, would he
have risked a meeting with the Earl of Dover, in a place where he had
been twice arrested, instead of awaiting his arrival in the security of
London? Such a strange course arouses strong suspicion that Morton was
the Protector's emissary referred to by Col. Cromwell; and assuredly a
Mr. Morton is mentioned to Thurloe, by one of his continental agents, as
a friend, and fellow sham-Royalist, who might assist him in enticing
some of the King's retinue into projects, such as the 'murther of H. H.
the Protector.'[41]

Nor was Mr. Morton the only agent busy in doing all he could 'to ripen
the design of a general rising.' During January and February, 1655,
messengers passed to and fro through the Northern and Western districts
of England to prepare the way for the Earl of Rochester and his
associates, who spread abroad rumours that the 'Levellers were to be
aiding and abetting the Cavaliers,' and that on the 8th of March, a
general rising would take place. Two men can be traced who thus prepared
Wiltshire for insurrection, one of whom was the chief instigator of
Wagstaff's rising at Salisbury.

Both of them were obscure men, not known in that part of England. An
unnamed emissary came from Yorkshire, passing through London, to
Dorsetshire, taking, on the way, the house, near Lewes, of Col. Bishop,
a Leveller, one of the Wildman faction.[42] The other, Mr. Douthwaite,
reached Wiltshire from Somersetshire. This circumstance, of itself,
aroused suspicion; and he was asked why, if the revolt, as he asserted,
was to be throughout all England, he did not choose Somersetshire,
instead of Wiltshire, for the scene of action. The reason he gave for
that choice had in it a strong dash of unreality. His motive was, he
declared, because 'if he did any mischief, or killed anybody,' he
preferred to do mischief 'among strangers, where he was not known.' So
unsatisfactory was his demeanour, that a recruit, whom he endeavoured to
cajole, refused to join the conspiracy, declaring that 'he was confident
this was a plot of my Lord Protector's own devising, and that he had
some of his own agents in it.' And as, during that winter, the
Dorsetshire Cavaliers had 'whispered that the plot' then 'so loudly
talked on at Court, is nothing but a trick of the great Oliver's,' this
idea seems to have been prevalent in the West of England. Some such
whisper, undoubtedly, had a marked influence on the Wiltshire