WILLIAM ASH MART.

113

in his agitation, had dropped on the gravel his official seal andthe packet of which he was the bearer. The seal -was discovered ■where it had fallen. Ashton, aware of the importance of thepapers, snatched them up and tried to conceal them: but theywere soon found in his bosom.

The prisoners then tried to cajole or to corrupt Billop. Theycalled for wine, pledged him, praised his gentlemanlike de-meanour, and assured him that, if he would accompany them,nay, if he would only let that little roll of paper fall overboardinto the Thames, his fortune would be made. The tide ofaffairs, they said, was on the turn: things could not go on forever as they had gone on of late; and it was in the captain’spower to be as great and as rich as he could desire. Billop,though courteous, was inflexible. The conspirators becamesensible that their necks were in imminent danger. Theemergency brought out strongly the true characters of all thethree, characters which, but for such an emergency, mighthave remained for ever unknown. Preston had always beenreputed a highspirited and gallant gentleman: but the nearprospect of a dungeon and a gallows altogether unmanned him.Elliot stormed and blasphemed, vowed that, if he ever gotfree, he would be revenged, and, with horrible imprecations,called on the thunder to strike the yacht, and on LondonBridge to fall in and crush her. Ashton alone behaved withmanly firmness.

Late in the evening the yacht reached Whitehall Stairs;and the prisoners, strongly guarded, were conducted to theSecretary’s office. The papers which had been found in Ashton’sbosom were inspected that night by Nottingham and Caer-marthen, and were, on the following morning, put by Caer-marthen into the hands of the King.

Soon it w’as known all over London that a plot had beendetected, that the messengers whom the adherents of James

Macaulay, History. VI. 8

CHAP.

XVI.

1690 .