66

HISTORY OE ENGLAND.

CHAP,xy In.1692 .

able conduct, took his leave of them. In the antechamber hefound a crowd of people staring at Young, while Young sate,enduring the stare with the serene fortitude of a man who hadlooked down on far greater multitudes from half the pillories inEngland. “Young,” said Sprat, “your conscience must tellyou that you have cruelly wronged me. For your own sakeI am sorry that you persist in denying what your associate hasconfessed.” “Confessed!” cried Young; “no, all is not con-fessed yet; and that you shall find to your sorrow. There issuch a thing as impeachment, my Lord. When Parliamentsits you shall hear more of me.” “ God give you repentance,”answered the Bishop. “For, depend upon it, you are in muchmore danger of being damned than I of being impeached.”*

Forty eight hours after the detection of this execrable fraud,Marlborough was admitted to bail. Young and Blackhead haddone him an inestimable service. That he was concerned ina plot quite as criminal as that which they had falsely imputedto him, and that the government was in possession of moralproofs of his guilt, is now certain. But his contemporarieshad not, as we have, the evidence of his perfidy before them.They knew that he had been accused of an offence of which hewas innocent, that perjury and forgery had been employed toruin him, and that, in consequence of these machinations, hehad passed some weeks in the Tower. There was in the publicmind a very natural confusion between his disgrace and hisimprisonment. He had been imprisoned without sufficientcause. Might it not, in the absence of all information, bereasonably presumed that he had been disgraced without suffi-cient cause? It was certain that a vile calumny, destitute of allfoundation, had caused him to be treated as a criminal in May.

* My account of,this plot is chiefly taken from Sprat’s Relation of thelate Wicked Contrivance of Stephen Blackhead and Robert Young, 1692.There are very few better narratives in the language.