■WILLIAM AND MART.

37

told them that he would never again trust to their soldiership.On this subject Englishmen were of one mind. Tories, Non-jurors, even Roman Catholics, were as loud as Whigs inreviling the ill fated race.. It is, therefore, not difficult toguess what effect would have been produced by the appearanceon our soil of enemies whom, on their own soil, we had van-quished and trampled down.

James, however, in spite of the recent and severe teachingof experience, believed whatever his correspondents in Eng-land told him; and they told him that the whole nation wasimpatiently expecting him, that both the West and the Northwere ready to rise, that he would proceed from the place oflanding to Whitehall with as little opposition as when, in oldtimes, he returned from a progress. Ferguson distinguishedhimself by the confidence with which he predicted a completeand bloodless victory. He and his printer, he was absurdenough to write, would be the two first men in the realm totake horse for His Majesty. Many other agents w'ere busy upand down the country, during the winter and the early part ofthe spring. It does not appear that they had much success inthe counties south of Trent. But in the north, particularly inLancashire, where the Roman Catholics were more numerousand more powerful than in any other part of the kingdom, andwhere there seems to have been, even among the Protestantgentry, more than the ordinary proportion of bigoted Jacobites,some preparations for an insurrection were made. Arms wereprivately bought; officers were appointed; yeomen, smallfarmers, grooms, huntsmen, were induced to enlist. Thosewho gave in their names were distributed into eight regimentsof cavalry and dragoons, and were directed to hold themselvesin readiness to mount at the first signal. *

* Life of James, ii. 479. 524. Memorials furnished by Ferguson toHolmes in the Nairne Papers.

CTTAP.XVII [.

16U2.