(1723.) [Illustration: Drop-T]he year 1723 found society variously agitated. There was real terror about the Plot; but among the gayer portion of society there was but small concern save to know whether Cuzzoni would come out at the Opera, and whether the racing season would be affected or not by the conspiracy. The above lady not only came out, but the king went, attended only by a few gentlemen, to hear the Syren. Criticism took this form of expression in the London Journals, January 19th, 1723:―― ‘His Majesty was at the Theatre in the Haymarket when Signora Cotzani (Cuzzoni) performed for the first Time, to the Surprise and Admiration of a numerous Audience, who are ever too fond of Foreign Performers. She has already jump’d into a handsome Carriage and an Equipage accordingly. The Gentry seem to have so high a Taste for her fine Parts, that she is likely to be a great Gainer by them.’ At this very time, the more serious drama was approaching its last act. [Sidenote: _THE PLOT._] On the 15th of January, 1723, the House of Commons resolved that a committee, consisting of such members of the House as were also Privy Councillors, should examine Layer and his papers, in the Tower, in order to get to a deeper knowledge of the plot to dispose of the king, than they yet possessed. In the subsequent report of this committee, it was stated that the horrible and execrable design had long been entertained by ‘persons of figure and distinction’ at home as well as by traitors abroad. Of those at home were Lord Orrery, Lord North and Grey, Lord Kinoul, Lord Strafford, Sir Henry Goring, and, with these, Bishop Atterbury, Captain Kelly, Kelly _alias_ Johnson, and one John Plunkett. Actively or passively, these were all concerned in a conspiracy for an invasion of the kingdom by a force that was to leave Spain under the Duke of Ormond, to be joined by a Jacobite force on the coast and in the capital, and by their united power to destroy the existing state of things, the royal family included. The committee complained that Layer would give them no assistance, but that by prevarications, contradictions, and downright lying, as they called it, he threw every sort of obstacle in their way. This threw them back on such papers as they had seized; but these papers, being partly or wholly in cypher, they had first to construct a key, and they then assumed that it solved every difficulty. They were indeed not far wrong, as the Stuart papers have since proved; but all the interpretations of initial letters, fictitious names, numbers for words, things or animals for persons, whereby Atterbury, Kelly, and Plunkett were chiefly implicated, were stoutly denied as being applicable, and such circumstantial evidence was not only denounced by the accused, but at a later period was derided by the great satirist of the day. [Sidenote: _SATIRE ON THE PLOT._]