The Society, of which Mr Holcroft was a member, seemed with the progress of these events to increase in amazement; and it might almost be said, in stupefaction. This was visible in the thinness of its meetings, its feeble resolutions, and long adjournments. Each man saw himself the butt of obloquy. Each man knew that Mr Reeves’s association was sitting in a room of the same tavern immediately over his head; and that this association was the focus of the opprobrium cast on them all. They supposed themselves to be watched by the very waiters. Thus wantonly and unjustly set up as a mark for public reproach, it is not much to be wondered at, that some petulant ebullitions occasionally burst forth. But was this guilt so enormous? Was it high-treason? When Mr Holcroft first heard that a few of its members had been taken into custody, he felt the greatest astonishment. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘either there have been practices of which I am totally ignorant, or men are running mad!’ The persons apprehended were severally, and some of them repeatedly examined before the privy council. The three estates of the kingdom had declared the existence of treason and conspiracy; and the nation seemed generally to credit the assertion. Mr Holcroft had been told more than once, that a warrant was issued against him. Incredible as the rumour would have been at any other time, he now believed it to be true. A warrant having according to report been issued against him, made it probable that he should also be examined before the privy council; and he therefore prepared for the event. The late John Hunter, and other medical men, had prescribed sea-bathing for him; and he intended to have gone out of town for this purpose. But on the first report of the warrant, he determined not to go, and took care to appear publicly, that he might not seem to evade inquiry. Many surmises and rumours prevailed during the summer of 1794. One week the persons in custody were immediately to be brought to trial: the next it was said the crown-lawyers had declared that a case of treason could not be made out, and that they would be tried for seditious practices. At length, when the affair seemed almost to have sunk into forgetfulness, it was suddenly revived; and a commission was appointed on the till then supposed highly improbable charge of high-treason. The proceeding astonished Mr Holcroft, as well as others; but he had no idea it was intended that he should be involved in it.