"For, after that the approaching fury of the flames had driven the king out of his own palace, his Majesty, at first, removed into another quarter of the town, remote from the fire, and, as yet, free from any annoyance of smoke and ashes. There his Majesty, finding he might be tolerably well accommodated, had resolved to stay, and continue his recreations as before, till the day first named for his journey back to London. But his Majesty had no sooner made that resolution, when the wind, as conducted by an invisible power from above, presently changed about, and blew the smoke and cinders directly on his new lodging, making them in a moment as untenable as the other. Upon this, his Majesty being put to a new shift, and not finding the like conveniency elsewhere, immediately declared, he would speedily return to Whitehall, as he did; which happening to be several days before the assassins expected him, or their preparations for the Rye were in readiness, it may justly give occasion to all the world to acknowledge, what one of the very conspirators could not but do, _that it was a providential fire._"--Pages 51_ et seq._ The proprietor of the Rye-house (for Rumbold was but a tenant) shocked at the intended purpose, for which it was to have been used, is said to have fired it with his own hand. This is the subject of a poem, called the Loyal Incendiary, or the generous _Boute-feu_. 10. The total ruin of those, who were directly involved in the Rye-house, was little to be regretted, had it not involved the fate of those who were pursuing reform, by means more manly and constitutional,--the fate of Russel, Essex, and Sidney. Rumbold, "the one-eyed archer," fled to Holland, and came to Scotland with Argyle, on his ill-concerted expedition. He was singled out and pursued, after the dispersion of his companions in a skirmish. He defended himself with desperate resolution against two armed peasants, till a third, coming behind him with a pitch-fork, turned off his head-piece, when he was cut down and made prisoner, exclaiming, "Cruel countryman, to use me thus, while my face was to mine enemy." He suffered the doom of a traitor at Edinburgh, and maintained on the scaffold, with inflexible firmness, the principles in which he had lived. He could never believe, he said, that the many of human kind came into the world bridled and saddled, and the few with whips and spurs to ride them. "His rooted ingrained opinion, says Fountainhall, was for a republic against monarchy, to pull down which he thought a duty, and no sin." At his death, he declared, that were every hair of his head a man, he would venture them all in the good old cause.