ing to join in an
insurrection, but recoiled from the thought of assassination, and showed
so much of what was in his mind as sufficed to make him an object of
suspicion to his less scrupulous associates. He kept their secret,
however, as strictly as if he had wished them success.

It should seem that, at first, a natural feeling restrained the
conspirators from calling their design by the proper name. Even in their
private consultations they did not as yet talk of killing the Prince of
Orange. They would try to seize him and to carry him alive into France.
If there were any resistance they might be forced to use their swords
and pistols, and nobody could be answerable for what a thrust or a
shot might do. In the spring of 1695, the scheme of assassination, thus
thinly veiled, was communicated to James, and his sanction was earnestly
requested. But week followed week; and no answer arrived from him. He
doubtless remained silent in the hope that his adherents would, after
a short delay, venture to act on their own responsibility, and that he
might thus have the advantage without the scandal of their crime. They
seem indeed to have so understood him. He had not, they said, authorised
the attempt; but he had not prohibited it; and, apprised as he was of
their plan, the absence of prohibition was a sufficient warrant. They
therefore determined to strike; but before they could make the necessary
arrangements William set out for Flanders; and the plot against his life
was necessarily suspended till his return.

It was on the twelfth of May that the King left Kensington for
Gravesend, where he proposed to embark for the Continent. Three days
before his departure the Parliament of Scotland had, after a recess
of about two years, met again at Edinburgh. Hamilton, who had, in the
preceding session, sate on the throne and held the sceptre, was dead;
and it was necessary to find a new Lord High Commissioner. The person
selected was John Hay, Marquess of Tweedale, Chancellor of the Realm, a
man grown old in business, well informed, prudent, humane, blameless in
private life, and, on the whole, as respectable as any Scottish lord
who had been long and deeply concerned in the politics of those troubled
times.

His task was not without difficulty. It was indeed well known that the
Estates were generally inclined to support the government. But it was
also well known that there was one subject which would require the most
dexterous an