Despite Tonge’s assurance that Pickering and Grove might be captured in St. James’ Park with their guns, the inquiry seemed as far from reaching solid ground as ever. All that the doctor could do was to point out Pickering to Lloyd in the chapel at Somerset House. It was offered as an excuse for Grove’s absence that he had a cold. Something better than this was obviously required. So one night Tonge went to Wimbledon himself and informed Danby that the assassins were bound for Windsor the next morning; he would arrange for Lloyd to travel in the same coach with them and procure their arrest on arrival. The Treasurer started at once and slept that night at Windsor, laying his plans for the capture; but when the coach drove in, lo! Danby’s gentleman stepped out alone. The others had been prevented from coming by an unforeseen accident. Within two days at furthest however, as Lloyd brought word from Tonge, they would be sure to come. Curiously enough the ruffians failed a second time. On this occasion they were riding and one of the horses had hurt his shoulder. The most that Tonge could manage was by way of addition to the information already lodged. Although Pickering and Grove had been stopped from attacking the king at Windsor, they had all but made the attempt in London. Unfortunately the flint of Pickering’s pistol was loose and he dared not fire: and for this he suffered a penance of thirty lashes. The story was afterwards improved, for Pickering had missed a rare chance not only once, but three times. Now his flint was loose, on another occasion he had no powder in the pan, on a third he had loaded with bullets only and no powder. It might be suspected too that the discovery of the plot was no longer a secret; for Oates, going one day to see Whitebread, the Jesuit provincial, had been met with abuse as a traitor and even with blows. Clearly the Duke of York, who had seen Kirkby come from his first interview with the king, had mistaken him for Oates and told his confessor of the accident.[127] The doctor’s efforts were vain. By no device could Charles be moved to take interest in the matter. Danby was alarmed by the idea that he was the only man beside his master to whom Tonge’s disclosures were known, thinking perhaps that if ill came it might go hard with himself, and urged that they might be communicated to others; but the king had already come to the conclusion that the conspiracy was fictitious, and after the ridiculous excuses offered by Tonge for the absence of the supposed assassins was all the more positive in his refusal to order a formal inquiry. He should alarm all England, he said, and put thoughts of killing him into the minds of people who had no such notions before.[128]