Londoners, and it could not have done otherwise than make their souls uneasy, and rouse their spirits to be up and doing. ‘Have you any notion of a civil war, your Treasury exhausted, your Banks plundered, your Trade decayed, your Companies bankrupt, your Shops rifled, and the various species of Stocks sunk, run down, and lost? Have you any idea of Fields flow’d with blood, your Streets pav’d with the carcasses of fellow citizens, your Wives and your Daughters torn from your Sides, and made a Prey to enrag’d undistinguishing Soldiers. Think that you see this beautiful and spacious City burnt, destroy’d, made a ruinous Heap, attended with all the dismal Horrors of Fire and Sword even from Fellow Countrymen, Fellow Subjects, and Fellow Protestants!’ [Sidenote: _A SOUND OF ALARM._] Citizens and fathers must have stared in a sort of dismay. Lambe might well say that if any disloyal man was present, he hoped such person had been cured of his malady. Jones, probably, went home thinking of a pavement made out of the carcasses of Brown and Robinson; and the ladies of citizen families walked behind them in a flutter of speculation as to what part of the force those undistinguishing soldiers belonged. [Sidenote: _JACOBITE AGENTS._] London may be called the head-quarters of the rebels, before actual war broke out. Captain John Shafto (on half-pay), an ex-Captain John Hunter, and an Irish Papist who had served in the brigade in France, were among the more active and daring agents. The leaders of the party kept their secret tolerably well. They met, debated, provided all things needful for their success, and carried on a correspondence with friends at a distance. While agents moved quietly away from London to teach the ‘Rurals’ the sacred duty of rebellion, more trusty messengers, still, rode or walked through and away from town, bearing letters and despatches which, if discovered, might cost a dozen lives. These trusty gentlemen were sent into various parts of the kingdom. They rode from place to place as travellers, pretending a curiosity to view the country; and they performed their dangerous duty with a success which perplexed the king’s messengers. The most dexterous of these agents were Colonel Oxburgh, Nicholas and Charles Wogan, and James Talbot, all Irish and Papists. There were others, men of quality too, and occasionally a clergyman, who were entrusted with important but still dangerous duties. ‘All these,’ says Patten in his ‘History,’ ‘rid like Gentlemen, with Servants and Attendants, and were armed with swords and pistols. They kept always moving, and travelled from place to place, till things ripened for action.’