A SPY IN THE HOUSEHOLD 13

hidden away for the time when the lawful king should return
to claim his own. Sir Marmaduke was deeply concerned
in the plot of 1696, when preparations had been made fora
great Jacobite rising throughout the country. Nothing came
of it, for the Duke of Berwick, who was to have led it, failed
in getting the two parties who were concerned to come to
an agreement. ‘The Jacobites were ready to rise directly a
French army landed. ‘The French king, on the other hand,
would not send an army until the Jacobites had risen, and
the matter therefore fell through, to Sir Marmaduke’s indig-
nation and grief. But he had no words strong enough to
express his anger and disgust when he found, that side by
side with the general scheme for a rising, a plot had been
formed by Sir George Barclay, a Scottish refugee, to assas-
sinate the king on his return from hunting in Richmond
Forest.

“Tt is enough to drive one to become a Whig,” he ex-
claimed. “I am ready to fight Dutch William, for he
occupies the place of my rightful sovereign, but I have no
private feud with him, and if I had I would run any man
through who ventured to propose to me a plot to assassinate
him. Such scoundrels as Barclay would bring disgrace on
the best cause in the world. Had I heard as much as a
whisper of it I would have buckled on my sword and rid-
den to London to warn the Dutchman of his danger. How-
ever, as it seems that Barclay had but some forty men with
him, most of them foreign desperadoes, the Dutchman
must see that English gentlemen, however ready to fight
against him fairly, would have no hand in so dastardly a
plot as this.

“Look you, Charlie, keep always in mind that you bear
the name of our martyred king, and be ready ever to draw
your sword in the cause of the Stuarts, whether it be ten
years hence or forty that their banner is hoisted again; but
keep yourself free from all plots except those that deal with