ediately affixed
their names to the amended form of association; and Rochester was among
them. Nottingham, not yet quite satisfied, asked time for consideration.
[686]

Beyond the walls of Parliament there was none of this verbal quibbling.
The language of the House of Commons was adopted by the whole country.
The City of London led the way. Within thirty-six hours after the
Association had been published under the direction of the Speaker it
was subscribed by the Lord Mayor, by the Aldermen, and by almost all the
members of the Common Council. The municipal corporations all over the
kingdom followed the example. The spring assizes were just beginning;
and at every county town the grand jurors and the justices of the peace
put down their names. Soon shopkeepers, artisans, yeomen, farmers,
husbandmen, came by thousands to the tables where the parchments were
laid out. In Westminster there were thirty-seven thousand associators,
in the Tower Hamlets eight thousand, in Southwark eighteen thousand. The
rural parts of Surrey furnished seventeen thousand. At Ipswich all the
freemen signed except two. At Warwick all the male inhabitants who had
attained the age of sixteen signed, except two Papists and two Quakers.
At Taunton, where the memory of the Bloody Circuit was fresh, every man
who could write gave in his adhesion to the government. All the churches
and all the meeting houses in the town were crowded, as they had never
been crowded before, with people who came to thank God for having
preserved him whom they fondly called William the Deliverer. Of all the
counties of England Lancashire was the most Jacobitical. Yet Lancashire
furnished fifty thousand signatures. Of all the great towns of England
Norwich was the most Jacobitical. The magistrates of that city were
supposed to be in the interest of the exiled dynasty. The nonjurors were
numerous, and had, just before the discovery of the plot, seemed to be
in unusual spirits and ventured to take unusual liberties. One of the
chief divines of the schism had preached a sermon there which gave rise
to strange suspicions. He had taken for his text the verse in which the
Prophet Jeremiah announced that the day of vengeance was come, that
the sword would be drunk with blood, that the Lord God of Hosts had a
sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. Very soon it was
known that, at the time when this discourse was delivered, swords had
actually been sharpening, under