England under Charles the Second was fast drifting back into the worst of the tyrannies that had darkened her former history. The King, as he proved on his death-bed, was a Roman Catholic in religion, and although professing to belong to the Church of England, moved in the steps of his brother James, who was an avowed Papist; and the country was rapidly becoming, politically, a dependency of the French King, and, in religion, a fief of the Pope. The four most conspicuous Englishmen who clearly saw the danger that threatened the freedom, both civil and religious, of England, and who had done their utmost to save their country—patriots in the best sense of that much-abused term, were at the time of the discovery of the Rye House Plot in 1683, either out of the country or in prison. Shaftesbury, after an imprisonment of five weeks in the Tower, had crossed to Holland after his liberation in November 1681. The news of his acquittal had been received with great rejoicings in the city, Reresby writing that “the rabble lighted bonfires.” The Duke of York, according to Lenthall, expressed his indignation publicly at “such insolent defiance of authority such as he had never before known.” But Shaftesbury’s friends and admirers had a medal struck in honour of his liberation, on one side being the Earl’s portrait in profile, and on the other a view of London taken from the Southwark side of the Thames, with the sun casting its rays over the Tower from out the clouds; above is inscribed the word, “Laetamur,” with the date 24 of November 1681 beneath. This medal gave rise to Dryden’s satirical poem called “The Medal,” in which he compares Shaftesbury to Achitophel. Russell, Sidney, and Essex were arrested and placed in the prisons of the Tower. They suffered death in the cause of constitutional liberty, as against the arbitrary power of the King, and also for wishing to exclude the Duke of York from the succession to the throne after his brother’s death. This plan was quite distinct from the Rye House Plot—a plot that arranged for the assassination of the King and the Duke of York on their road to Newmarket races.