although those who disliked his nonjuring principles did what they could to plague his peace. He was reported to be engaged with some of his brethren in plots for the restoration of the exiled Monarch; and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, came under suspicion of the same offence, in consequence of which he was arrested in his orchard at Bromley one day, whilst quietly working out the heads of a sermon.[221] In the end, these charges of conspiracy proved to be abominable fabrications, which Sprat took care fully to expose.[222] Other Nonjurors were suspected of treasonable intrigues, and Dean Hickes fell into great trouble. “If the persons,” it is said in a letter written at the time, “now malignantly fermented, should find him walking abroad, they would certainly take him up and bring him forthwith to the King’s Bench, and be ready with an information against him.” The Dean was advised to abscond for the present, and so he became, “like the tortoise in winter-time, earthed for some days.” Dr. Bryan about the same time heard that a warrant had been issued for his apprehension, on account of his having written “flat treason.” “It was advisable for him to step out of the way.” Ten days later, Bishop Lloyd, to whom we are indebted for these snatches of information, wrote again to the archiepiscopalian recluse, that he found the Dean had removed his quarters, and desired to be very private, and that messengers were searching for Dr. Bryan.[223] [Sidenote: SANCROFT.] Sancroft, who escaped arrest because Sprat, when confronted with his accusers, exposed their falsehoods, seems to have been more annoyed a few months before by a very different accusation. “The spirit of calumny, the persecution of the tongue, dogs me even into this wilderness. Dr. Lake, of Garlick Hill, and others, have (as I am informed) filled your city with a report that I go constantly to this parish church, and pray for I know not whom, nor how, and receive the Holy Sacrament; so that my cousin had something to do to satisfy even my friends that it was quite otherwise.”[224] The fallen Primate’s intense dislike to the Establishment--as bitter as could be manifested by any virulent Dissenter--here bursts out in unmistakable fashion. The feeling remained as a sort of monomania to the day of his death. It kept him from setting foot over the threshold of a parish church, and led him to frame an instrument by which he appointed Lloyd, the deprived Bishop of Norwich, his Vicar in all ecclesiastical matters,[225] and inaugurated a voluntary and schismatical Episcopalian Church. [Sidenote: 1693.]