The attack on the queen affords a clue to the ideas of both adversaries in the great battle that was being waged in the English state between authority and revolution. Mrs. Elliot, wife of Elliot of the bedchamber, had been the agent who took Oates’ message to the king. She had also spoken to Tonge, and in a significant statement to the House of Lords confessed she had been sent to him by Lady Gerard of Bromley. The mention of this lady’s name throws a ray of light on the doubtful intrigue, for she was in close connection with the Whig leaders; and were it in any case permissible to suppose that Oates had acted without assurance of support in bringing forward a charge of so delicate a nature, her appearance in the background would make it certain that this was not so. It may be taken that the move was directed from the headquarters of the Whig party. What then was the object? Catherine had never played any part whatever in politics. In obtaining favour for those of her religion she had held strictly to the terms of her marriage treaty. After the first shock at her husband’s faithless impudence she had passed her time in gaiety, dancing, and frivolity. Only one end could be served by attempting to prove her a party to the Plot. It was to obtain her divorce and to marry the king to a wife who should bear him Protestant children. The knowledge of Catherine’s childlessness had given rise before to talk of a similar project.[410] If it could actually be brought to completion and Charles beget a Protestant heir to the throne, there seemed a fair chance that the clouds which hung over the future of England would be dispelled. Desire for power alone did not then actuate Shaftesbury, but a purer hope for his country’s prosperity. For had the scheme of divorce borne fruit and the Duke of York, with all the unrest and insecurity that his presence denoted, been removed from the succession by the appearance of a child who could hardly have been educated except as a Protestant, Shaftesbury could not have hoped himself to exercise a decisive influence on the king’s policy. The storm gave Shaftesbury his power; when calm returned it would dissolve. This is his claim to real statesmanship. He was willing, it must be believed, to sacrifice power to principle, and to plan, though with odious implements, advantage to the nation, while he contemplated for himself a relapse into insignificance. What followed under Charles II’s successor justified his position. Swift changes transformed his schemes and drove him to counsels of extremity, but the Revolution suspends judgment against him. The principle he embodied was that which William the deliverer came to England to save from utter ruin, the reasoned liberty of thought and action. For that he worked and made others work without sparing, bribed while his own hands were clean of gold, joined while his private life was pure with profligates of unrestrained license; for that he planned murder and brewed