The arrest of Disney struck a chill into Wilding. From his lodging at Covent Garden he had communicated cautiously with Sunderland a few days after his arrival, building upon certain information he had received from the Duke at parting as to Sunderland’s attachment to the Cause. He had carefully chosen his moment for making this communication, having a certain innate mistrust of a man who so obviously as Sunderland was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. He had sent a letter to the Secretary of State when London was agog with the Axminster affair, and the tale—of which Sir Edward Phelips wrote to Colonel Berkeley as “the shamefullest story that you ever heard”—of how Albemarle’s forces and the Somerset militia had run before Monmouth in spite of their own overwhelming numbers. This promised ill for James, particularly when it was perceived as perceived it was—that this running away was not all cowardice, not all “the shamefullest story” that Phelips accounted it. It was an expression of good-will towards Monmouth on the part of the militia of the West, and it was confidently expected that the next news would be that these men who had decamped before him would presently be found to have ranged themselves under his banner.
Sunderland had given no sign that he had received Wilding’s communication. And Wilding drew his own contemptuous conclusions of the Secretary of State’s cautious policy. It was a fortnight later—when London was settling down again from the diversion of excitement created by the news of Argyle’s defeat in Scotland—before Mr. Wilding attempted to approach Sunderland again. He awaited a favourable opportunity, and this he had when London was thrown into consternation by the alarming news of the Duke of Somerset’s urgent demand for reinforcements. Unless he had them, he declared, the whole country was lost, as he could not get the militia to stand, whilst Lord Stawell’s regiment were all fled and mostly gone over to the rebels at Bridgwater.
This was grave news, but it was followed in a few days by graver. The affair at Philips Norton was exaggerated by report into a wholesale defeat of the loyal army, and it was reported—on, apparently, such good authority that it received credence in quarters that might have waited for official news—that the Duke of Albemarle had been slain by the militia which had mutinied and deserted to Monmouth.
It was while this news was going round that Sunderland—in a moment of panic—at last vouchsafed an answer to Mr. Wilding’s letters, and he vouchsafed it in person, just as Wilding—particularly since Disney’s arrest—was beginning to lose all hope. He came one evening to Mr. Wilding’s lodgings in Covent Garden, unattended and closely muffled, and he remained closeted with the Duke’s ambassador for nigh upon an hour, at the end of which he entrusted Mr. Wilding with a letter for the Duke, very brief but entirely to the point, which expressed him Monmouth’s most devoted servant.
“You may well judge, sir,” he had said at parting, “that this is not such a letter as I should entrust to any man.”
Mr. Wilding had bowed gravely, and gravely he had expressed himself sensible of the exceptional honour his lordship did him by such a trust.
“And I depend upon you, sir, as you are a man of honour, to take such measures as will ensure against its falling into any but the hands for which it is intended.”
“As I am a man of honour, you may depend upon me,” Mr. Wilding solemnly promised. “Will your lordship give me three lines above your signature that will save me from molestation; thus you will facilitate the preservation of this letter.”
“I had already thought of that,” was Sunderland’s answer, and he placed before Mr. Wilding three lines of writing signed and sealed which enjoined all, straitly, in the King’s name to suffer the bearer to pass and repass and to offer him no hindrance.
On that they shook hands and parted, Sunderland to return to Whitehall and his obedience to the King James whom he was ready to betray as soon as he saw profit for himself in the act, Mr. Wilding to return to Somerset to the King James in whom his faith was scant, indeed, but with whom his fortunes were irrevocably bound up.
Meanwhile, Monmouth was back in Bridgwater, his second occupation of which town was not being looked upon with unmixed favour. The inhabitants had suffered enough already from his first visit; his return there, after the Philips Norton affair of which such grossly exaggerated reports had reached London, and which, in point of fact, had been little better than a drawn battle—had been looked upon with dread by some, with disfavour by others, and with dismay by not a few who viewed in this an augury of failure.
Now Sir Rowland Blake, who since his pursuit of Mr. Wilding and Trenchard on the occasion of their flight from Taunton had—in spite of his failure on that occasion—been more or less in the service of Albemarle and the loyal army, saw in this indisposition towards Monmouth of so many of Bridgwater’s inhabitants great possibilities of profit to himself.
He was at Lupton House, the guest of his friend Richard Westmacott, and the open suitor of Ruth, entirely ignoring the circumstance that she was nominally the wife of Mr. Wilding—this to the infinite chagrin of Miss Horton, who saw all her scheming likely to go for nothing.
In his heart of hearts it was a matter of not the slightest consequence to Sir Rowland whether James Stuart or James Scott occupied the throne of England. His own affairs gave him more than enough to think of, and these disturbances in the West were very welcome to him, since they rendered difficult any attempt to trace him on the part of his London creditors. It happens, however, very commonly that enmity to an individual will lead to enmity to the cause which that individual espouses. Thus may it have been with Sir Rowland. His hatred of Wilding and his keen desire to see Wilding destroyed had made him a zealous partisan of the loyal cause. Richard Westmacott, easily swayed and overborne by the town rake, whose vices made him seem to Richard the embodiment of all that is splendid and enviable in man, had become practically the baronet’s tool, now that he had abandoned Monmouth’s Cause. Sir Rowland had not considered it beneath the dignity of his name and station to discharge in Bridgwater certain functions that made him more or less a spy. And so reliable had been the information he had sent Feversham and Albemarle during Monmouth’s first occupation of the town, that he had won by now their complete confidence.
The second occupation and its unpopularity with many of those who earlier—if lukewarm—had been partisans of the Duke, swelled the number of loyally inclined people in Bridgwater, and suddenly inspired Sir Rowland with a scheme by which at a blow he might snuff out the rebellion.
This scheme involved the capture of the Duke, and the reward of success should mean far more to Blake than the five thousand pounds at which the value of the Duke’s head had already been fixed by Parliament. He needed a tool for this, and he even thought of Westmacott and Lupton House, but afterwards preferred a Mr. Newlington, who was in better case to assist him. This Newlington, an exceedingly prosperous merchant and one of the richest men perhaps in the whole West of England, looked with extreme disfavour upon Monmouth, whose advent had paralyzed his industries to an extent that was costing him a fine round sum of money weekly.
He was now in alarm lest the town of Bridgwater should be made to pay dearly for having harboured the Protestant Duke—he had no faith whatever in the Protestant Duke’s ultimate prevailing—and that he, as one of the town’s most prominent and prosperous citizens, might be amongst the heaviest sufferers in spite of his neutrality. This neutrality he observed because it was hardly safe in that disaffected town for a man to proclaim himself a loyalist.
To him Sir Rowland expounded his audacious plan… He sought out the merchant in his handsome mansion on the night of that Friday which had witnessed Monmouth’s return, and the merchant, honoured by the visit of this gallant—ignorant as he was of the gentleman’s fame in town—placed himself entirely and instantly at his disposal, though the hour was late. Sounding him carefully, and finding the fellow most amenable to any scheme that should achieve the salvation of his purse and industries, Blake boldly laid his plan before him. Startled at first, Mr. Newlington upon considering it became so enthusiastic that he hailed Sir Rowland as his deliverer, and heartily promised his cooperation. Indeed, it was Mr. Newlington who was, himself, to take the first step.
Well pleased with his evening’s work, Sir Rowland went home to Lupton House and to bed. In the morning he