But there was an influential party among the high Tories who were unmistakably anxious to restore the Stuarts, and even the Duke of Marlborough, who all his life through had a passion for intrigue, finding that he was not trusted by King George, seems to have entered into negotiations with the Pretender, “the Chevalier de St. George,” who in August, 1715, published from France a manifesto, asserting his right to the throne. When the Whig Government impeached Bolingbroke and the Duke of Ormond for complicity, they fled to France. But the rising incapable man; and though he was joined by other nobles in the North, and might have won most dangerous successes, he shrank before the Duke of Argyll, who had been sent by the king to oppose him. The result was the rebellion of 1715 and its failure. The most conspicuous character in this ill-starred attempt was James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, a young man of twenty-six who deserved a better fate, for all accounts describe him as singularly attractive and winning in person and manner. He was the only Englishman of note who joined the enterprize. His mother, Mary Tudor, was a natural daughter of Charles II, who brought him up as a Roman Catholic. He was very rich for those days. His home, from which he took his title, was an island in the most beautiful of English lakes, and his income from mines was nearly £40,000 a year. With him were six Scotch nobles, William Maxwell, Earl of Nithisdale; Robert Dalzell, Earl of Carnwarth; William Gordon, Lord Kenmure, brother-in-law of Carnwarth; George Seton, fifth Earl of Wintoun; William, Lord Nairn; and William, fourth Lord Widdrington. They were brought up to London tightly bound on horseback, and paraded through the streets to the prison. Much interest was made for them in Parliament, and a vote of petition for pardon was carried in the House of Lords. They were tried in February, 1716, and condemned. Wintoun was the only one who refused to plead guilty, but was convicted and sentenced. Next year Widdrington, Carnwarth and Nairn were pardoned, the others were left for death. So greatly was Derwentwater loved in his own home that it is said the peasantry drove his wife out of it because, as they alleged, she had driven him to rebel and so deprived them of a generous landlord. But when the crowds assembled on Tower Hill, they found, to their great amazement, that there were only three victims. For Lord Nithisdale had escaped the night before. His young wife had travelled up, through the winter snow, all the way from their home in Dumfriesshire to beg forgiveness for him. Failing in this, she formed her plans with great skill, and has left the narrative, which reads like an entrancing romance—the taking into the condemned cell a friend to whom she had confided her method as they walked along the street, the double dress which she persuaded the friend to put on at entrance, enduing the prisoner with the outer dress, and so deceiving the sentinels.