ot till the new sheriffs were imposed on the
city that they were revived. The leaders of the country party began then
to apprehend themselves in imminent danger; and they were well pleased
to find that the citizens were struck with the same terror, and were
thence inclined to undertake the most perilous enterprises. Besides
the city, the gentry and nobility in several counties of England were
solicited to rise in arms. Monmouth engaged the earl of Macclesfield,
Lord Brandon, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and other gentlemen in Cheshire; Lord
Russel fixed a correspondence with Sir William Courtney, Sir Francis
Rowles, Sir Francis Drake, who promised to raise the west; and Trenchard
in particular, who had interest in the disaffected town of Taunton,
assured him of considerable assistance from that neighborhood.
Shaftesbury and his emissary Ferguson, an Independent clergyman and a
restless plotter, managed the correspondence in the city, upon which the
confederates chiefly relied. The whole train was ready to take fire;
but was prevented by the caution of Lord Russel, who induced Monmouth
to delay the enterprise. Shaftesbury, in the mean time, was so much
affected with the sense of his danger, that he had left his house, and
secretly lurked in the city; meditating all those desperate schemes
which disappointed revenge and ambition could inspire. He exclaimed
loudly against delay, and represented to his confederates, that having
gone so far, and intrusted the secret into so many hands, there was
no safety for them but in a bold and desperate prosecution of
their purpose. The projects were therefore renewed: meetings of the
conspirators were appointed in different houses, particularly in
Shephard's, an eminent wine-merchant in the city: the plan of an
insurrection was laid in London, Cheshire, Devonshire, and Bristol: the
several places of rendezvous in the city were concerted; and all the
operations fixed: the state of the guards was even viewed by Monmouth
and Armstrong, and an attack on them pronounced practicable: a
declaration to justify the enterprise to the public was read and
agreed to: and every circumstance seemed now to render an insurrection
unavoidable; when a new delay was procured by Trenchard, who declared
that the rising in the west could not for some weeks be in sufficient
forwardness.

Shaftesbury was enraged at these perpetual cautions and delays in an
enterprise which, he thought, nothing but courage and celerity