ited Provinces, brought Europe to the verge
of war. Charles, indeed, was anxious to avoid war and he was as anxious
to avoid Parliaments whose assembly war would certainly force upon him
as Lewis himself. The tide of loyal reaction was mounting in fact higher
every day. The king secured the adhesion of the Church by a renewed
persecution of the Nonconformists, which drove Penn from England and
thus brought about the settlement of Pennsylvania as a refuge for his
fellow-Quakers. He was soon strong enough to call back James to Court
and to arrest Monmouth, who had resumed his almost royal progresses as a
means of again stirring opinion in his favour. London alone remained
firm for the Whigs; but the friendship of a Tory mayor secured the
nomination of Tory sheriffs in the summer of 1682, and the juries they
packed left the life of every Exclusionist at the mercy of the Crown.
Shaftesbury saw himself threatened with ruin. It was in vain that he
offered to waive his plans of exclusion and to fall in with the king's
older proposals of a limited monarchy in the case of James's accession.
The loss of London left him without a shelter, and drove him to wild
conspiracies with a handful of adventurers who were as desperate as
himself. He hid himself in the City where he boasted that ten thousand
"brisk boys" were ready to appear at his call. From his hiding-place he
urged his friends to rise in arms. But their delays drove him to flight;
and in January 1683, two months after his arrival in Holland, the soul
of the great leader, great from his immense energy and the wonderful
versatility of his genius, but whose genius and energy had ended in
wrecking for the time the fortunes of English freedom and in associating
the noblest of causes with the vilest of crimes, found its first quiet
in death.

[Sidenote: The Rye-House Plot.]

The flight of Shaftesbury proclaimed the triumph of the king. His
marvellous sagacity had told him when the struggle was over and further
resistance useless. But the country leaders who had delayed to answer
the Earl's call still believed opposition possible, and looked for
support to the discontent of the Nonconformists at the revival of the
penal laws. Monmouth, with Lord Essex, Lord Howard of Escrick, Lord
Russell, Hampden, and Algernon Sidney, held meetings with the view of
founding an association whose agitation should force on the king the
assembly of a Parliament. The more desperate spirits who had c