10G

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

chap, said William. “He will do till I find a fit man; and he will be— - Jp' - quite willing to resign as soon as I find a fit man. Any otherperson that I could put in would think himself ill used if I wereto put him out.” If William had said all that was in his mind,he would probably have added that Sidney, though not a greatorator or statesman, was one of the very few English politicianswho could be as entirely trusted as Bentinck or Zulestein.Caermarthen listened with a bitter smile. It was new, he after-wards said, to see a nobleman placed in the Secretary’s office,as a footman was placed in a box at the theatre, merely in orderto keep a seat till his betters came. But this jest was a coverfor serious mortification and alarm. The situation of the primeminister w y as unpleasant and even perilous; and the durationof his power would probably have been short, had not fortune,just at this moment, put it in his pow r er to confound his adver-saries by rendering a great service to the state.*

JacoMie The Jacobites had seemed in August to be completelycrushed. The victory of the Boyne, and the irresistible explo-sion of patriotic feeling produced by the appearance of Tour-ville’s fleet on the coast of Devonshire, had cowed the boldestchampions of hereditary right. Most of the chief plotters passedsome weeks in confinement or in concealment. But, widelyas the ramifications of the conspiracy had extended, only onetraitor suffered the punishment of his crime. This was a mannamed Godfrey Cross , who kept an inn on the beach near Rye,and who, when the French fleet was on the coast of Sussex,had given information to Tourville. When it appeared thatthis solitary example was thought sufficient, when the dangerof invasion was over, when the popular enthusiasm excited by

* Aa to the designs of the Whigs against Caermarthen, see Burnet,ii. 08, 09., and a very significant protest in the Lords’ Journals, October 30.1690- As to the relations between Caermarthen and Crodolphin, seeGodolplun’s letter to William dated March 20. 1691, in Dalrymple.