ate misfortune, Colonel Westbury was with the Captain-General gone to
Holland; Captain Macartney was now at Portsmouth, with his regiment of
Fusileers and the force under command of his Grace the Duke of Ormond,
bound for Spain it was said; my Lord Warwick was returned home; and Lord
Mohun, so far from being punished for the homicide which had brought so
much grief and change into the Esmond family, was gone in company of my
Lord Macclesfield's splendid embassy to the Elector of Hanover, carrying
the Garter to his Highness, and a complimentary letter from the Queen.

CHAPTER IV.

RECAPITULATIONS.

From such fitful lights as could be cast upon his dark history by the
broken narrative of his poor patron, torn by remorse and struggling in
the last pangs of dissolution, Mr. Esmond had been made to understand
so far, that his mother was long since dead; and so there could be
no question as regarded her or her honor, tarnished by her husband's
desertion and injury, to influence her son in any steps which he might
take either for prosecuting or relinquishing his own just claims. It
appeared from my poor lord's hurried confession, that he had been made
acquainted with the real facts of the case only two years since, when
Mr. Holt visited him, and would have implicated him in one of those many
conspiracies by which the secret leaders of King James's party in this
country were ever endeavoring to destroy the Prince of Orange's life or
power: conspiracies so like murder, so cowardly in the means used, so
wicked in the end, that our nation has sure done well in throwing
off all allegiance and fidelity to the unhappy family that could not
vindicate its right except by such treachery--by such dark intrigue and
base agents. There were designs against King William that were no
more honorable than the ambushes of cut-throats and footpads. 'Tis
humiliating to think that a great Prince, possessor of a great and
sacred right, and upholder of a great cause, should have stooped to such
baseness of assassination and treasons as are proved by the unfortunate
King James's own warrant and sign manual given to his supporters in this
country. What he and they called levying war was, in truth, no better
than instigating murder. The noble Prince of Orange burst magnanimously
through those feeble meshes of conspiracy in which his enemies tried
to envelop him: it seemed as if their cowardly daggers broke upon the
breast of his undaunted reso