The country had been sickened of civil war, and public spirit seemed to have deserted the land. Still the Whig leaders of the late majority in Parliament made some attempts at organizing resistance. Shaftesbury was for immediate rebellion; but Lords Essex, Howard, and William Russell, and Algernon Sidney, more cautiously resolved to wait the course of events, and act when an opportunity arose. They certainly meant an insurrection in London, to be supported by a rising in the West of England, and another in Scotland under the Earl of Argyle. But a conspiracy in a lower stratum of political influence, called the Ryehouse Plot, which proposed the deaths of the King and his brother, having been divulged to the Government, and certain arrests made, the prisoners, to save themselves, declared that Lords Howard and Russell, and Sidney, Hampden (a grandson of the John Hampden of ship-money fame), and others were implicated. Howard—recreant to the traditions of his name—turned approver. Lord William Russell was tried for treason—nobly supported by his wife—and although the evidence against him was weak, a packed jury convicted him, and he was beheaded at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Sidney was tried by Judge Jeffreys. Howard was the only witness against him, and for a conviction of treason the law required at least two witnesses; but a manuscript treatise on Government had been found amongst Sidney’s papers; certain passages on political liberty would nowadays be considered as mere truisms, but Jeffreys ruled that they were equal to two-and-twenty adverse witnesses. He also was found guilty, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. Shaftesbury fled to Holland. Lord Essex—a true nobleman—blaming himself for having put it into Howard’s power to injure Lord Russell, committed suicide. And some Scottish gentlemen were also implicated in the Whig plot. Bailie, of Jerviswood, had been in correspondence with Lord Russell, and was asked to give evidence against him. On his refusal, he was himself tried for treason,—condemned and executed. Many were fined and imprisoned; many left the country, or otherwise could not be found, but were tried in their absence—outlawed, and their estates forfeited. James returned to London: he feared the influence of the Duke of Monmouth, who, trading on his father’s favour and his own handsome face and genial manners, posed as an ultra-Protestant, and, in spite of his illegitimate birth, aspired to the succession. James had Monmouth sent to Holland—then, under the Prince of Orange, the refuge for English and Scottish exiles.