Outwardly there was a peaceful look, and peaceful thoughts and words, just where the storm and the thunderbolt were preparing. Atterbury, the most active Jacobite agent of the time, wrote pious and philosophical and pharisaical letters, from the Deanery at Westminster, to Pope. ‘I know not,’ he writes (April 6), ‘how I have fallen into this train of thinking;――when I sat down to write I intended only to excuse myself for not writing, and to tell you that the time drew nearer and nearer to dislodge; I am preparing for it: for I am at this moment building a vault in the Abbey for me and mine. ’Twas to be in the Abbey, because of my relation to the place; but ’tis at the West door of it; as far from Kings and Cæsars as the space would admit of.’ The prophet knew not the sense of his own prophecy. The despiser of kings and Cæsars was then plotting to overthrow a king to whom he had sworn allegiance, and to bring in a Cæsar hot from Rome, and ready to be Rome’s humble vassal! [Sidenote: _JACOBITE TRYSTING PLACES._] In May, when the peril was made known, there was great stir in London among the adherents of the royal family. The early Jacobites gathered together in the morning at the Exchange. At noon, groups of them collected about Temple Bar. The ‘Malignants’ in finer clothes walked and talked in front of the Cocoa Tree (St. James’s Street) between two and three. The Temple Garden was the chosen spot of _all_ of them at night. Hyde Park, and their old Walnut Tree walk there, were deserted by them as soon as preparations for pitching the camp in that spot were commenced. A few, however, were to be found there mingling with Whigs and discussing the aspects of the time. Amid it all, the king, by Lord Townshend, announced to the Lord Mayor that the Pretender was projecting an invasion of the kingdom. Mayor and municipality replied that they were ready to lay down their lives to prevent it. Then followed a seizure of seditious printers and their apprentices. Papists and Nonjurors were ordered to withdraw to a distance of ten miles from London; and these measures having been adopted, the ministers deemed that the country was in safety. But timid men quoted Steele’s expression, first made in 1715,――‘Ministers employ a flute when they should blow a trumpet.’ The louder alarum was soon given. The country was dotted with camps. The most important of these was pitched in Hyde Park. It consisted of about one thousand cavalry, of whom more than half comprised the ‘gentlemen of the Horse Guards.’ The infantry amounted to about four thousand. There was a reasonable amount of artillery, and a creditable supply of chaplains, the king having peremptorily ordered that Divine service should be celebrated _every day_ at 11 o’clock. [Sidenote: _THE OFFICERS IN CAMP._]