Neither exile nor death on the scaffold, which had followed this outbreak of 1715-16, quenched the ardour of individual Jacobites. An enthusiastic candidate for martyrdom was earning the reward of his unrighteous enthusiasm this year. He was an eminent barrister of the Middle Temple, named Christopher Layer. He was a man of extreme views. He hated the Act of Settlement and (it is said) he loved unlovable women. In order that he might be the Lord Chancellor of James III., he was willing to murder, by deputy, George I. Layer went to Rome and had an interview with ‘the King over the Water.’ The zealot sought to be permitted to accomplish a revolution which, he said, no one would understand till it had been carried out successfully. Layer’s theory was that King George should be seized, which meant murdered, at Kensington, by hired assassins; that, at the same time, the prince and princess should be secured, and the ministry be summarily dispatched. Layer boasted of having the ultra-Papists and Jacobites with him, and it is certain that, whether James favoured the design or not, Layer and his confederates met at an inn in Stratford-le-Bow; where Layer protested that the so-called Prince of Wales should never succeed to the crown of England. [Sidenote: _THE PLOT._] After conspiring at Stratford, and trying to entice soldiers at Romford, the would-be Chancellor of the Stuart wrote his letters and despatches at the residence, now of one Dalilah, in Queen Street, now at that of another in Southampton Buildings! He who would fain have had the keeping of his king’s conscience could not keep his own secret. He might have written in comparative secrecy and safety in his own chambers in the Middle Temple, but he both wrote and prattled in the presence of two beautiful and worthless women, who, in their turn, first betrayed and then gave testimony against him. It was subsequent to one of his examinations before the magistrate by whose warrant Layer had been arrested, that the Jacobite counsellor was confined in a messenger’s house. There, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, and to be left perfectly undisturbed while he wrote out a full confession of all his treasonable designs. All that he asked was granted; but Layer devoted his undisturbed time to other objects, and not to confession. He prepared means for descending from the window of his room into a yard below. In testing them, he fell on to a bottle rack, by which he was grievously hurt; yet, not so much but that he was up and off before the alarmed officials reached the yard. A hot pursuit commenced. The messenger and his men came upon Layer’s trail at Westminster Ferry, and finally ran him down at Newington. [Sidenote: _LAYER AT WESTMINSTER._]