Whilst these schemes were being fashioned within the parlors of the “Dolphin,” the “Rising Sun,” and the rest of the City taverns, a very different order of men were at the same time deliberating how to pull the nation out of the slough of despotism into which it had been plunged. Upon the death of Shaftesbury, who had been during the last years of his life the most prominent of the foes of the court, especially of the Duke of York, and the most potent among the disaffected in the city of London, the leaders of the Whig party, aware of the danger which menaced them from “froward sheriffs, willing juries, mercenary judges, and bold witnesses,” determined not to let the cause which Shaftesbury had advocated fall to the ground. They held frequent meetings at different places of rendezvous, and formed themselves into a select committee, which was known by the name of the “Council of Six.” The members of this council were the Duke of Monmouth, who was intriguing for the crown, Lord Essex, Algernon Sydney, Lord William Russell, Lord Howard, and young Hampden, the grandson of the opponent of ship-money. What the deliberations of this council were it is now difficult to ascertain, owing to the prejudiced sources from which information had to be derived; the official accounts of the plot, drawn up at the request of the King by Ford, Lord Grey, and by Sprat, the servile Bishop of Rochester, are not to be implicitly believed in; nor is the evidence of the witnesses produced by the Crown at the trials of Sydney and Russell a whit more trustworthy. There can be no doubt, however, that consultations were frequently held among the Six as to the best course to pursue for resisting a Government which aimed at nothing less than arbitrary power. If we are to credit the men who sold their testimony to the Crown, and the men who purchased life by turning King’s evidence, the aim of the Council was to organise an insurrection all over the country, and with the help of the discontented Presbyterians in Scotland to put an end to the tyranny of Charles and his Popish brother. What was the exact extent of their designs we know not, but in all probability the statement by Lady William Russell is not far from the truth. “There was,” said her ladyship, “much talk about a general rising, but it only amounted to loose discourse, or at most embryos that never came to anything.”